


Bad Medicine

by Backwoulds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All Saints' Day, Awesome Rowena MacLeod, BAMF Winchesters (Supernatural), Bad Choices All Around, Canon-Typical Violence, Confused Jack Kline, Depression, Gen, Good To Be Bad, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Oblivious Winchesters (Supernatural), Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Reader goes darkside, Reader-Insert, References to Depression, Shooting, Soulless Reader, Soullessness, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), Therapy, Therapy gone wrong, This could all be avoided if y'all just talked to each other, To Be Continued, Winchesters (Supernatural) to the Rescue, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 47,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Backwoulds/pseuds/Backwoulds
Summary: It's been a hard couple of months for you. "Hard" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's been awful, aching, desperate, and you can't tell the Winchesters. You can barely admit it to yourself. You're so close to losing it, it scares you.So you find yourself a therapist in Lebanon, and BOY is she good.And BOY is she also a witch.And BOY does she have a spell to help.Nothing comes without a price, kiddo.
Relationships: Castiel (Supernatural) & You, Dean Winchester & You, Jack Kline & You, Rowena MacLeod & You, Sam Winchester & You, Sam Winchester/You (Past)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having a really hard time lately mentally, and one day found myself wishing I could make it all go away by getting rid of what makes me *me*. I mean, what better way to cure depression than remove a soul, right?
> 
> First chapter only involves You (the reader) and an original female character, but I hope that doesn't deter you from reading more.
> 
> EDIT: Just wanted to add, if you're going through it, keep going. You're not alone. And, as our boys would remind us, AKF.
> 
> Set in Season 13, after Cas comes back, but before Donatello goes whacko.

You’ve been seeing a therapist on the sly for about a month now. It’s going pretty well, all things considered, even though you have to express yourself in half-truths and outright lies 90% percent of your sessions. The boys don’t know; there’s no need to tell them. You just need a little mental tune-up, is all. At least that’s what you’ve told yourself.

It wasn’t until your last one-night stand went so far sideways you were sure you would never recover that you figured it out: you are not holding it together, kid. You’ve been drinking too much. You’ve been sneaking cigarettes when Sam and Dean are out. You’re crying yourself to sleep every other day at this point, and blacking out most of the nights in between. If Sam and Dean have noticed, they haven’t said anything to you. The fact that you’re hiding it so well is what scares you the most. So when you picked up that biker in Toledo in the middle of a bender and somehow ended up climbing out of his bathroom window to escape after things got violently out of hand in the bedroom, the cold, hard reality of knowing you’d hit rock bottom almost came as a relief.

At least that’s what you’ve told yourself.

It wasn’t easy finding a therapist in Lebanon that was accepting new patients, and proved even harder to find one who would accept cash. You searched for about a week before giving up and hitting a local watering hole to drown your frustrations in as much whiskey as you could swallow. Well, as luck would have it, the dusky brunette you’d struck up a conversation with in a bar that Friday evening just happened to be a therapist, who just happened to have moved to town, and who just happened to be in the process of establishing her practice there. It was kismet, you’d thought. Divine providence. So far, she was proving you right.

No last names, no credit cards, no billing address. You and Juliet are a therapy match made in hunter heaven. She seems to be as eager to help you as you are to get it all out. And, as she’s told you more than once, it’s about damn time.

You’re sitting on Juliet’s couch while she makes you each a cup of tea. It’s your fifth session, and, as well as things have been going in your treatment overall, it’s a session you desperately need. You didn’t sleep last night. You haven’t sleep well all week, in fact. Your anxiety has ramped up to a new high, and it doesn’t help that Sam and Dean have been gone for three days, leaving you alone with your own thoughts and several fully-stocked liquor cabinets. You grab one of her throw pillows and hold it against your torso.

Juliet places the tea in front of you, but you’re too attached to the throw pillow to touch it. “Tell me about your week,” she starts, her voice low and comforting.

You take a long, deep breath and let it out in a loud WHOOSH. “I don’t know where to start. Nothing happened, exactly, but I feel… wrong. All I want to do is sleep, or drink until I’m unconscious.”

Juliet’s watching you with a concerned expression. She’s noticed how tightly you’re hugging her pillow. It makes you self-conscious. You want to get rid of it, but you’re not sure what you’d do with your hands if you did. The tea seems too hot to hug at this point.

“What do you mean when you say ‘wrong?’” she asks. “Are you feeling anxious? Depressed?”

You struggle with that one, because you’re not sure you have the words. “Yes, and no. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I just know it’s awful. It feels like anxiety, but it’s worse somehow. It’s like someone blended anxiety and depression together and then poured it into my head. I feel like I’m going crazy, and the only way to stop it is to check out completely. I can’t work, I can’t think, I can’t do anything when I’m like this.”

Her brown eyes sparkle with something you’d almost mistake for mischief in any other setting. She takes a long pause, inhaling slowly like she’s weighing what she’s about to say. At last, she exhales with sigh of determination. “I know we haven’t been seeing each other long, but I know something that will help you. It’s unorthodox, but I guarantee you it will work.”

“Unorthodox how?” You begin to release your grip on the pillow. She notices.

“It’s a spell.”

You gape at her, unsure you’ve heard her correctly, and nearly fall off of the sofa. “A what?”

“Darling, I know what you are. You’re a hunter. I’ve known since the first moment we spoke at Eddie’s.” Your jaw drops. You’re floored. How the hell could she possibly know? You’re on your feet immediately, instinctively getting into a fighting stance. The comfort pillow hits the floor with a soft thud.

“I’m not just a therapist,” she continues, “I’m a witch. I know a spell—a very old, and powerful spell that will get rid of these awful feelings for you. I promise, you’ll be absolutely free from all of it. All of that pain, that rage, that sorrow. You’ll never feel any of it again.”

Your defenses drop. You’re so tired of fighting. So tired of hurting. You just want it to end. You look into Juliet’s eyes and see she means what she says. She’s a therapist, after all. She helps people. And she can help you.

“I can’t just… use a spell to make this go away,” you mutter, shaking your head. “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

“And you don’t want the Winchesters to find out,” Juliet chimes in.

There it goes again. The feeling of the floor shifting under your feet. How careless have you been, letting her figure all this out? A witch, of all people. How far off your game are you that you’ve allowed this to happen?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Juliet says, her voice soft and comforting. The perfect therapist voice. “I didn’t seek you out, I promise. I just saw you sitting in that bar and felt the waves of hatred and anger and despair rolling off of you and I couldn’t help myself. I’m not usually in the business of helping hunters.”

“And I’m not usually in the business of talking to witches.” Save Rowena, of course, but you don’t need to mention that. And there’s a pretty good chance she already knows.

“I make it my business to know when there are hunters in any town I move to. There aren’t very many people with the particular spelling of your name in Lebanon to begin with, and there’s only one who travels and lives with two co-dependent brothers who all happened to show up about the time Abaddon started making waves topside.” Juliet pauses, waiting for you to take this all in. When you still don’t respond, she continues.

“I want to make this easier for you. I know you think all witches are terrible and in league with Lucifer—”

“Believe me, I don’t think you’re in league with Lucifer at all,” you interject. You’ve been hunting long enough to know how little Lucifer has to do with the True Craft.

She continues without missing a beat: “But there are plenty of us who just want to help. Magic is a gift. I believe it’s a crime to use it only to further one’s own station, or even the station of a singular coven. Magic is about balance. It’s about give and take, and, once something’s taken, something must be given back.”

Juliet moves to the couch beside you and places a hand on your forearm. You flinch, but don’t pull away. You half-expect your skin to crawl when she touches you, but her hand is warm and gentle against you. “You and your friends have saved this world countless times, and I have to admit, as far as worlds go I’m pretty damn fond of it. I’d like to give you something back. I’d like to give you yourself back.”

You take a moment to mull over her words. There are always shades of grey, damn it. Things would be a hell of a lot easier if there weren’t. She’s a witch, but she’s obviously known who you are the entire time you’ve known her, and she hasn’t done a single thing to harm you. She hasn’t come after you or the boys; she hasn’t informed any other monsters of your whereabouts or called in the reinforcements to take you down for good. Maybe she’s like that shifter grief counselor, the one who gave Jack a final moment of peace with his mom (with a projection of his mom, anyway)—a monster in name only, saving people in her own way the way you and Sam and Dean do.

“What happens if I say no?” You say at last, staring deep into her dark, brown eyes for any hint of betrayal. You see nothing. Damn it, you wish you could find that comforting.

Juliet releases her hold on your arm and leans back to give you space. “If you say no, then we have two choices: One, you continue seeing me as a therapist and we pretend this never happened; or two, this is our last session and we never see each other again.”

“You’ll leave Lebanon, you mean?”

“You’re the one who's made a home here, dear. I’ve got no roots. It makes it easier to pick up and move. This isn’t my first rodeo. I only have three patients aside from you for whom I can make referrals—they’ll be taken care of. All I ask, if that’s your choice, is you don’t come after me—and you don’t send others after me either. You’ve made deals like that before.” Your eyes widen a little and she catches it with a little smirk. “I’m very good at what I do. It’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.”

You look down at the cup of tea, which is starting to cool in front of you. “How would this spell work?” you ask, too afraid to make eye contact. This can’t honestly be something you’re considering right?

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Juliet is silent long enough for you to look back up at her. She catches your gaze and redirects it back to the tea.

“Well,” she sighs, “it starts with that.”

You’re horrified and practically throw yourself off of the couch and away from the woman sitting next to you.

“That’s part of a spell, and you were going to have me drink it without telling me?” Your senses start coming back to you. Therapist or no, you are dealing with a seriously powerful witch, and you need to start thinking like it. You’re back in fighting stance, and your hand is nervously twitching near where your gun would be. You know, if you had actually brought your gun. Juliet immediately recoils and throws her hands up as a sign of surrender and penance. She looks so pitiful, you almost forget for a moment that she was about to poison or enchant you with Chuck-knows-what.

“No,” she says, firmly. “I would never have allowed you to drink it without explaining what it was. It’s not dangerous. It’s not the spell itself. It’s preparative, that’s all. Even if you drank it, if I didn’t complete the ritual, nothing would happen to you. It’s meant to cleanse and prepare your body for the magic and nothing more.”

“What’s in it?” you demand, hardening your position. You notice Juliet hasn’t moved any further toward or away from you. That’s a point in her favor.

“Hawthorne. Blackberry. Butcher’s broom. Burdock. Dulce. A few other herbs, but nothing deadly, and nothing dangerous. Everything that’s in it is either for cleansing, luck, or protection.” She folds her hands in her lap and watches you calmly. Either she doesn’t think you’ll actually hurt her, or she’s made peace with the idea. It unnerves you how much more that second possibility makes you like her.

You have a few options here, kid:

  1. Kill the witch, slink back to the bunker, and admit everything to Sam and Dean.
  2. Say no to the spell, continue therapy knowing you’re sitting down with a witch once a week and you’re hiding it from your friends.
  3. Say no to the spell, discontinue therapy, and watch Juliet drive off to the next town to set up shop.
  4. Here, of course, is the most interesting one: say yes. Say yes to the spell and let the anger and desperation and hopelessness fall away like autumn leaves after the first good frost. Say yes and get back to being the hunter you know you are, the PERSON you know you are. Say yes and end the pain you’ve been in for so long it’s worn you down to nothing.



You feel your muscles relax. Your eyes meet hers again, and they’re calm. You both are. You nod slowly, unsure of yourself, and yet somehow sure that this is the right choice.

Juliet picks up the tea with both hands and stands to face you. “Drink it slowly, but drink it all at once. Don’t spill a drop. Then we’ll begin.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You come home, relieved, revived, and somehow... off.

“Dean, knock it off,” Sam slaps his brother’s hand as he reaches across his lap for the bowl of popcorn on his knee. “Ten minutes ago, you said you didn’t want any.”

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” Dean grumbles, slinking back to his side of the sofa.

“Then go make your own,” Sam retorts, tossing a handful of puffy goodness into his mouth and chowing down.

Dean scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child. “Like you can even eat a whole thing of popcorn by yourself, you friggin’ health nut. You’ll be begging me to help you finish it after the first jump scare.”

Sam ignores him, grabbing the remote to turn the volume down before it has a chance to blow out his eardrums. “Dude, what are we watching again?”

“All Saints Day 5.” The triumphant grin on his face says it all. Before Sam can open his mouth, Dean’s snatched the remote from him and turned the volume back up to a healthy 25. “Can’t fight me on this one, Sammy. You agreed it’s my pick tonight, especially after you put me through ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ last week.”

“’Seven Years in Tibet’ is an **important** film, Dean.” Sam grabs for the remote, but his brother holds it just out of reach over the edge of the couch.

“Not important enough to keep me awake for the whole thing, apparently.” Dean tosses the remote onto the floor and grabs the beer sitting on the coffee table in front of him. “Trust me, you’ll love this one. Easily the weirdest thing in the entire series.”

“Won’t I be lost if I haven’t seen part four?” Sam asks sarcastically.

Dean nearly spits out his beer. “You haven’t seen part four? Dude, whose brother are you, actually? Where do you even come from?”

Sam rolls his eyes and hits play on the Apple TV remote. Apparently Dean’s forgotten Sam can control the volume from there as well, but Sam will play that one close to the chest until he needs a quick save. The cheesy opening notes of the theme song start playing as Dean settles into his place nestled in the cushions, and Sam reluctantly sighs and grabs his own beer. He’s going to need a lot to get through this.

The scene opens on a group of kids sitting around a campfire on what’s clearly a soundstage. Sam rolls his eyes as Dean grins in excitement.

“You know, we really shouldn’t be out here like this. Not tonight,” the cute, innocent brunette on the right side of the screen says.

“Classic first line,” Dean mutters under his breath. Another grin, another swig of beer.

“Come on, Andrea,” the muscular blonde jock next to her chides. “You don’t really believe in all that bullshit, do you?"

“What bullshit?” a meek, mousey blonde (obviously the new kid in town) asks, her voice wavering perfectly. Sam looks over and sees Dean is mouthing the dialogue to himself between sips of El Sol.

“You mean you don’t know?” Now it’s the nerdy boy’s turn to speak. The rest of the group except for the mousey blonde rolls their eyes and groans collectively, but it doesn’t deter Nerd Boy in the least. He’s got a job to do, damn it, and he’s gonna get this narrative started. “It happened a few years ago. There was a man. A man named David Yaeger. Real honest, hard-working type, would never hurt a fly… you know the sort.”

Dean looks like a kid in a candy store.

“Anyway, a group of kids just like us thought he’d be the perfect mark for Halloween prank. They set up everything, had it all ready to go, but something went wrong. They killed David Yaeger, and they never told anyone about it… _but someone... knew_.”

The innocent brunette is curled under the blonde jock’s biceps like they’re the last things protecting her on this earth. The mousey blonde leans forward in spite of her obvious fear. Perfect horror movie opening scene, as far as Dean is concerned.

“How?” the blonde whispers.

“Because he came back. He came back as the Hatchet Man on All Saints’ Day, and he exacted his revenge. He gave them exactly what they deserved. He murdered them all” The group is stunned into silence. “And then he came back and did it… three… more… times.”

“Wait,” says the blonde. “How could he kill them all three more times?”

Sam chuckles in spite of himself. A dark look from Dean shuts him up.

Nerd Boy is quiet for a moment. “No one knows.”

Sam’s had enough, “All right, Dean, this is ridiculous, this makes absolutely no sense—”

“You sit your Seven-Year-ass down on this couch and you watch the damn movie, Sam,” Dean orders him, beyond irritated at having possibly his favorite scene of the entire franchise interrupted. Sam is stunned into silence and settles back, though the look on his face shows he’s obviously not thrilled about it. The movie continues.

“I mean,” the blonde continues, “he couldn’t have killed the same people three different times. And unless there were enough people involved in the prank that killed him in the first place that it took him three separate tries over the span of a couple of years to kill them all, there’s no way it should have taken him that long to exact his revenge.”

The brunette is shaking her head, “Tina, be quiet. You’re not from around here. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Today is All Saints’ Day. We should leave. We should leave before he—”

A noise behind them all cuts her off. Now it’s Sam’s turn to scoff. “It’s All Saints’ Day and they’ve decided to go camping knowing that this maniac shows up and murders teenagers every year on the same day in this town?”

“Well, one time he took Manhattan—” Dean starts before catching himself. “Hey! Shut it, Sam. I didn’t talk through Brad Pitt making sad eyes at every Tibetan person he saw during your movie.”

“That is literally ALL you did until you passed out.”

Meanwhile, on screen, a deer has wandered into the midst of the teenagers and given them all something to laugh about.

“Thank god,” Jock Boy says, “For a second, I thought that was Hatchet Man coming to get us.”

Brunette Audrey stands and starts gathering her things. “Okay, I think we’ve all had our fun. I’m glad it was just a deer, but who knows what’s out in these woods. We need to be getting home.”

“Who knows what’s out in these woods?” Blonde Tina echoes, her voice suddenly taking on a sharp, angry tone. “Who KNOWS what’s out in these woods?” The rest of the teens scramble to their feet and huddle together, moving away from Blonde Tina as though she’s suddenly grown a second head.

“Well,” she says, “I know what’s out in these woods. I know, because I’ve always been here. Just waiting for all of YOU—” With that, she reaches up and pulls her face off of her head because—OH MY GOD—she’s been Hatchet Man the entire time.

“TIME TO SLICE AND DICE!” Dean and Hatchet Man shout triumphantly in tandem as the screen teens run screaming into the night.

Sam angrily hits pause before Dean can think to take the remote away from him. He stares at Sam with a mixture of pure fury and childlike hurt in his eyes.

“How did that make ANY sense?” Sam demands, slamming the popcorn down in front of him. “They all clearly knew Tina before they went up into the woods. Has she been Yaeger the whole time, or did he kill her and disguise himself as her and somehow convince the others he’s been a sixteen year-old cheerleader instead of a six-and-a-half-foot dead guy for the last thirty minutes?”

“It doesn’t have to make sense, Sammy,” Dean says, slamming his bottle of beer down in a movement perfectly reminiscent of his younger brother. “That's the beauty of the slasher flick. The sooner you learn to accept that, the sooner you can—”

Upstairs, the bunker door slams shut. Silence follows. David Yaeger and the nonsensical movie opening forgotten, both Sam and Dean are on their feet.

“Kid, is that you?” Dean calls out, eyes on the door to the Dean Cave as he moves closer to Sam in case they need to move.

“Well, it’s probably not Hatchet Man,” Sam mumbles, earning him an elbow in the rib from Dean.

There’s no answer. Dean motions with his head for Sam to follow and leads the way into the hallway and up the stairs to the main entryway of the bunker. The room is empty, which is definitely not a good sign. Both boys grab the closest thing to them that will work as a weapon and make their way past the conference tables and towards the kitchen.

Dean puts up a hand and motions for Sam to stop. “You hear that?” he whispers, his voice barely audible. It’s the sound of something rummaging through the pantry. Sam nods his reply.

“On three,” he commands, then silently runs the count down with his fingers. When he hits zero, the two of them burst into the kitchen, “weapons” (a heavy book, and a bust of some long-dead scholar) raised high over their heads.

You whirl around from your place in front of the refrigerator somewhere between shock and hilarity. The wind is taken out of their sails so fast you practically watch them deflate. Without thinking, you throw your arms up in surrender and step back slowly, making yourself as unthreatening a target as possible. Just because they don’t have guns doesn’t mean they won’t beat the hell out of you, and just because they don’t have guns _drawn_ doesn’t mean they’re not packing.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” you shout, arms still up. “Calm down, it’s me!”

Both Sam and Dean slam their respective objects down on the nearest surface and take a moment to catch their breath.

“What the hell, kid?” Dean asks angrily. “Didn’t you hear me call out to you?”

You put your arms down and cross them over your chest. “I called back,” you say in self defense. “Guess maybe it wasn’t loud enough?”

“You think?” Sam replies, his tone as pissy and petulant as you’ve ever heard it.

“Jesus, guys,” you say, taking a step toward them and uncrossing your arms to turn your palms upward in a gesture of apology, “I didn’t even realize you could hear the door close. I thought I was being quiet.”

Dean looks at the clock behind you. “It’s 8:45. We expected you here hours ago.”

“I’m sorry,” you shrug, “I lost track of time.”

“And you didn’t think to call?” Sam says. Gosh, they’re good at this whole “tag-team” nonsense.

“No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry. You want me to say it again? I’m sorry I was too quiet, and I’m sorry I didn’t call. I know it’s movie night and I didn’t want to interrupt.” You stand there in front of them, silent. You know you should at least feel a little remorseful, but you don’t. You just feel vaguely thirsty. “It’s really not that big a deal.”

“Not that big a deal?” Dean sneers. God, you hate it when he does that. “You could have been anything walking through that door. How were we supposed to know it was you looking for a little post-workout snack or... whatever?”

“If the warding had failed THAT badly, then yeah, I would be a little more worried,” you reply cattily. Dean at least has the grace to look a little embarrassed by the notion. “As for not calling,” you turn to Sam, since that’s apparently his fish to fry tonight, “it won’t happen again, okay?” You sigh and grab a beer from the fridge before shutting the door. “I don’t know how many more times I can say ‘I’m sorry’ for something so minor before you two get those idiotic looks off your faces. I figured between the two of you and Cas and Jack, things were handled here.”

“Cas and Jack are out,” Dean says, and that’s all he’ll apparently offer on the subject.

“Well then, I’m sorry I didn’t know that.” You crack open the beer and take a swig. The length of your sip takes both Dean and Sam aback slightly. You belch quietly and wipe your mouth on the back of your forearm. “There. Is that enough penance? Am I sorry enough now to be let off the hook, or do you want to stand here and go another few rounds?”

Sam stares at you for a minute, looking you over from top to bottom. “Something’s different about you, kid.”

You take another sip of beer and shake your head. “The only difference is I’m finally feeling clear of some crap after a couple of months.” The boys both stare at you like they doubt every word coming out of your mouth. “I swear. Good medicine, that’s all.”

The three of you watch each other long enough for you to finish your beer and go for another one. “So, are you just going to watch me drink all night, or are we going to go back downstairs and finish whatever it is you started watching while I was away?”

Both of the Winchesters shift uncomfortably. Something’s up with you, but they can’t quite put their fingers on it. They’ve known you haven’t been yourself for months, but neither one of them could bring themselves to talk to you about it. Better to let it work itself out, isn't that the Winchester motto? Is it really just as simple as the storm has finally broken and you’re out of whatever funk you’re in?

Dean opens his mouth to ask, but shuts it quickly. It’s stupid to ask now. He’s had weeks to talk to you about whatever’s going on in your head and to bring it up now is pure cowardice. He glances at Sam and can tell he’s thinking the same thing.

You watch both of them and can see their thoughts scrawled across their faces. It’s better this way. You don’t want them asking what’s going on. It means admitting that they’ve known this entire time but haven’t cared enough to speak up about it. It means admitting that they’re taking the coward’s way out and waiting until the problem is solved to even acknowledge there is a problem. You don’t want to think about your boys like that. At least you shouldn’t want to. Right now, you’re having a hard time caring, but the voice in the back of your head suggests it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Sleeping dogs. Good choice.

Dean’s the first to shrug off the weirdness. “All Saints Day 5: The Search For David Yaeger,” he finally says, acting as if this entire bizarro interaction hasn’t just happened.

“Is that the one with David Hasselhof?” you ask, starting on the second beer.

“Best cameo of the decade, if you ask me,” he says, his smile stretched from ear to ear.

You smile back. “Well, hell yeah! Time to slice and dice.” You mime “cheersing” the beer bottle Dean’s left downstairs and let him lead the way out the door and down the corridor.

You risk a glance back over your shoulder and meet Sam’s eyes. You feel nothing. And you smile.

Sam’s the last one in the kitchen, watching your empty smile with a strange sinking in chest. He grabs his own beer from the fridge, thinks about it for a moment, and then grabs a few more. Something is telling him there’s a lot he isn’t going to want to dwell too strongly on tonight.

And only half of it is the Search for David Yaeger.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning, Sam confronts you over coffee. It's not much of a confrontation, however, when you can't bring yourself to care about anything he has to say.

“You’re up early,” Sam’s voice in the quiet of the morning is the first sound you’ve heard in hours aside from the ticking of the clock. You turn from your place at the coffee maker and offer him a cup.  
  
“Didn’t sleep,” you say, sounding a lot more coherent than you have any right to sound. You catch Sam’s glance of concern as he takes the mug from your hand and ignore it with dignified purpose. Immediately, Sam recoils from the heat of the coffee and throws the thing down on the counter beside him, sloshing steaming liquid across the metal countertop.  
  
“What the crap,” he shouts, shaking his hand as if that will get rid of the pain coursing across his palm. “How in the hell can you hold that? It’s scalding!” He stares at you like you’ve got a severed head in your hands rather than a nice, warm cup o’ joe.  
  
You shrug. “It doesn’t seem that hot to me,” you murmur. “Chef’s hands, maybe?” You take a sip. It is a little warm, you suppose, but you kind of like it. Sam is flabbergasted.

“Look, what the hell is going on with you?” He drops his voice quickly. He obviously doesn’t want to wake Dean, even though he knows his brother needs to be a part of this conversation. Last night was strange enough, but now you’re up all night drinking coffee hot enough to cause first degree burns? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and as much as Sam has been avoiding talking to you about your problems lately, this is just too god damn much.

You shrug again. It infuriates Sam. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I told you. I’m getting over some really bad crap, which,” you take another sip, nonchalant as can be, “it would have been really nice of you to have asked about before I figured it all out. But, since you didn’t, I don’t see a reason to talk about it now.”

Sam’s stuck somewhere between seething and worry, a position he is remarkably familiar with after all of his years of dealing with you and Dean. This is new, though. This is something he recognizes, even though he can’t quite figure out why. Your calm demeanor is more unnerving than your anger would be. Your words suggest a silent fury, but he doesn’t see it. There’s nothing in your eyes when he meets them. There’s hardly any hints in your voice as to what’s really going on with you. It’s like nothing has changed, and everything has changed, and it’s all happened overnight. It would be downright terrifying if he could figure out what the hell was going on.

“Are you pissed at me for not asking what’s been going on with you?” he asks, genuinely concerned.

You shrug for a third time and lean against the counter with your mug clutched against your chest. “I was. I think. I’m not sure anymore. Maybe I was hurt because you didn’t notice. Maybe I was hurt because you did notice and you didn’t say anything.”

“Maybe?” Sam echoes, trying to understand.

“Maybe,” you agree pleasantly. “But honestly, Sam, it’s fine now. I’m over it. Whatever happened or didn’t happen is in the past. We’re here now. It’s fine, I’m fine, we’re fine. We can just get on with our lives and drink our coffee… save people, hunt things, all that good stuff.” You smile, and it doesn’t reach your eyes. You don’t notice. Sam does.

“What happened to you before you got home last night?” he asks, moving closer to you. He expects you to move away, but you don’t. You’re so calm about everything, it's making everything worse.

“Nothing happened, Sam.” You stare at him. He stares back. It doesn’t look like he’s going to break, so you decide to do it. No use hiding anything. You have nothing to hide. Everything is good. Everything is great.

“I found a therapist,” you finally say. Another sip. Another smile. Another concerned grimace from Sam.

“A therapist?” he asks. “How? What? Why?”

You laugh, but the sound is a little hollow. “I’ve been losing my mind.” You wait for him to ask for a justification, but he just stares the question at you instead of saying it out loud. “I stopped sleeping. I started drinking. I had to shut up the voices in my head. Every day, I lived with a feeling that told me the only way out was to kill myself.” Your voice is even, calm, and disturbing. It horrifies Sam. It sounds like you’re rambling off a grocery list, and yet you’re talking about suicidal ideation. His eyes widen and you see tears form at their corners.

“It went on for months, Sam. I went out and found the worst people I could find to fight and fuck. Sometimes at the same time. I nearly drove my truck off the road more times than I can count. And I didn’t tell you or Dean because I didn’t know how, and neither of you noticed or asked. I hid it from you, and from Cas, and from Jack, and the more I hid it, the more I realized I had to.”

Sam still hasn’t spoken. The room is starting to spin. He regrets not waking Dean so much he actually thinks about smashing his untouched coffee cup against the wall just to get him into the room as fast as humanly possible.

“So I found a therapist. I knew I needed help, and I got it.” You smile again, and this time it reaches your eyes. Technically. Something isn’t there—a spark? A light?—that should be. Sam notices and doesn’t notice at the same time. He’s too gobsmacked to understand what he’s looking at.

“And that…” he finally stammers, casting glances to the door, hoping at any moment Dean will wake up and stumble into the room looking for his own coffee to start the day. “That all somehow happened last night?”

You shake your head and laugh again. “No, Sam. I found her about a month ago. I’ve been seeing her behind your backs.” Sam looks shocked, and all you can do is chuckle. “It’s all been behind your backs. I didn’t see why this was any different.” He’s staring at you again, and it should be annoying the hell out of you. Nothing, however, is bothering you this morning. Just like Juliet promised. “Last night, she made me an offer, and I took it, and now everything is exactly the way it should be. I feel even. I feel whole. I don’t feel that horrible pain in my chest every waking moment like I have for the past three months. I feel…”

“Nothing?” Sam offers.

“Yes,” you agree, smiling. “I don’t feel anything, and it’s wonderful. It’s what I wanted.” You finish your coffee and turn to leave. “You can tell Dean if you want,” you say, without facing Sam. “I know you’re going to anyway. And I know you’re both going to have questions, and I’ll answer them if I can.”

“Kid…” Sam is at a loss for words. Something in his memories tells him he knows _exactly_ what is wrong with you, but he can’t put it together. Not now. Not yet. This is all too sudden. What in the fuck is going on? How, in one night, have you become a totally different person without changing at all?

Just as you’re about to leave the room and head back to your own, you finally turn to look at him. “Don’t worry about me, Sammy. I’m finally where I want to be. I want you to be happy for me. And if you can’t be, well… I hope you can at least accept it.”

You don’t let him answer. You walk out the door and into the hallway. It’s cold, but you can’t feel it. You can’t feel anything, and it’s perfect.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam convinces Dean that it's well past time to worry.

“I’m telling you, Dean, something is wrong with her.”

Hours after your weird-ass interaction in the kitchen, when Sam is sure he’s heard the engine of your truck fade into the distance and the garage door shut securely behind you, he all but corners his brother in the library of the bunker to tell him exactly what went down this morning. Dean, a little worse for wear after drinking his way through last night’s fright fest, is taking a moment to warm up to the fact.

“Any idiot can see that,” he retorts, leaning back in his chair across the table from Sammy. A pile of newspapers sits between them, along with their open laptops. Sam’s browser is navigated to a local news site for Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Dean’s, on the other hand, is showing the censored pay page for BUSTYASIANBEAUTIES.NET. If he’s embarrassed, he doesn’t seem to show it.

“The kid’s been wound up for months,” Dean continues. “Hell, who wouldn’t be? Even before we got Cas back, all the crap we’ve been wading through is enough to make any of us crack. Maybe it’s finally her turn to go a little off the deep end. Lord knows you and I have both done it enough.”

Sam sighs and drags his hands down his face in exasperation. “You’re not listening to me. There is something _wrong_ with her. It’s not the usual crap.”

“When is it **ever** the usual crap with us?” Dean retorts.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

Dean heaves a sigh of his own and leans forward on both of his elbows, letting his shoulders sag a little under the weight they’ve been carrying. He suddenly looks tired—so, so tired—and Sam feels a twinge of sadness seeing the mask slip even this much. “We should have said something to her,” he starts, his voice dropping almost like he expects you to walk in on them at any moment. It takes Sam a minute to realize he’s doing it because he’s talking more to himself than to anyone else. “Hell, I saw what was happening. I watched her get worse. After that thing in Toledo—” he stops and swallows a lump that’s formed in his throat.

That thing in Toledo.

It’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen happen to you. They’ve seen you with your insides on the outside more times than they can count. They’ve seen you coughing up blood, tied up to all sorts of tubes in countless emergency rooms. Hell, they’ve literally watched you die in front of them, and that thing in Toledo is still somehow worse than all of it.

Sam’s the one that found you after you’d pulled your way through that bathroom window. It was only a two story drop, but you hadn’t been expecting it. You were curled up on the pavement, shivering in the freezing rain that had started about twenty minutes after you’d left the bar with that biker against both the Winchester’s wishes. Your leg wasn’t broken, thank god, but both your ankles were pretty badly sprained from the fall.

“Dean!” Sam screamed for his brother, knowing Dean and Baby were waiting nearby to help facilitate as fast a getaway as you’d need. You’d managed half a panicked phone call before the biker’d ripped the phone from your hand, and thankfully you’d choked out just enough information for them to be able to figure out where you were.

Dean ran over as Sam struggled to figure out where you were hurt. Your face was covered in blood; your mouth so swollen he could barely make out what you were saying. The fact that you’d thrown back at least half a bottle of Jack on your own in the past hour and a half certainly didn’t help matters.

“Jesus,” Dean muttered, drawing a hand down the side of his face. “Is she okay?”

“It’s her legs. Maybe just her ankles, I'm not sure,” Sam answers, finding bruises, cuts, and scrapes just about everywhere he looks. It’s too dark to tell how many of them are from tonight and how many are from your day-to-day brawls, but enough of them are oozing blood for Sam to know just how bad things were before you threw yourself out the window. “We need to get her inside—now.”

Dean nods and moves aside. Sam easily sweeps you into his arms, and you make a sound halfway between a scream and a sob that freezes both Winchesters in their tracks.

“Come on, man,” Dean is the first to snap out of it. “We’ll get her back to the hotel. Hopefully she doesn’t need to go to the hospital. Baby’s just around the corner under the awning of the Chinese place. Ignition’s running.” He turns in the direction of the front of the building you’ve clearly come out of. “I’ll meet you out front in ten.”

Sam’s face screws up as he watches Dean head the opposite direction he should be heading.

“Dean, where are you going?”

Without turning around, Dean reaches into his jacket to feel the cool metal of his gun against his callused fingers. “To find that biker asshole.”

You never told them the entire story, and they never asked. All they knew (all you let them know) was he’d beaten you so badly your face took almost a full month to heal. And this was before Cas was back, so you’d had to endure it all in real time. You were reminded of it every time you looked in a mirror, or caught your reflection climbing in or out of the Impala. You hadn’t gone home with a guy—or girl—since.

“After that thing in Toledo,” Dean starts again, his voice wavering just enough for Sam to catch it, “I should have stepped in. I should have said or done something, but I didn’t—”

“Neither did I,” Sam interjects.

“—because I’m a coward,” Dean finishes. Sam is still for a moment, then nods. “You know as well as I do what happens when we keep this crap bottled up like we always do. Sooner or later, we go off the rails one way or another. This is just her way of going of the rails, Sam.”

Sam shakes his head and pounds his fist against the desk. “This isn’t ‘going of the rails,’ Dean. _Toledo_ was going off the rails. This is calm. This is rational. This…” what’s the word the two of you keep using? “This is nothing.”

“If it’s nothing,” Dean counters, “then why are we worried about it? It’s not like she’s gone rogue or started setting public buildings on fire.”

“Did I tell you she’s seeing a therapist?” Sam suddenly asks, eyebrows raised.

“A therapist?” Dean echoes, his own brows knitting together. “No, you didn’t tell me she’s seeing a therapist. Since when is she seeing a therapist? Since when does any of us see a therapist?”

Sam relaxes a little, relieved that Dean finally sees something serious enough in this conversation to show some concern.

“She said it’s been about a month. She said that’s why she was late last night. The therapist… ‘made her an offer she couldn’t refuse,’ or something.”

“Is her therapist Don Corleone?”

“It gets weirder,” Sam says, leaning in conspiratorially. Dean does the same in spite of himself. “She said the therapist made her this offer, and now all the bad stuff in her head is just—POOF—gone. Just like that, months of depression and thoughts of suicide—”

“Wait, wait,” Dean puts his hands up, horrified, “she was thinking about suicide?” Just how much had he let go unspoken between you if things had really gotten that bad? Jesus, he needs a drink.

“Yes. All of it. Gone.”

They sit there in the silence of the library, each averting his gaze to avoid meeting each the other’s eyes. This is big, awful stuff. This is not typical hunter burn-out followed by a nasty, personal dust-up. This is the Winchesters being so afraid of confronting their own feelings with everything that’s been going on the past couple of months that they’ve nearly lost one—ANOTHER one—of their team to their own stupid, god-damn denial.

“Jesus,” Dean says at last, burying his face in his hands.

“I know,” says Sam, covering his mouth and stroking his bottom lip with his thumb.

“Okay,” Dean continues, his words muffled by his fingers, “say something _is_ wrong with her. Something WORSE,” he corrects himself before Sam can. “What do we do? Do we just start asking questions now like we suddenly care after not saying anything this entire time? We didn’t talk to her about Toledo. I mean, how the hell is that going to look?”

“I don’t know, Dean,” Sam says, shrugging and moving his hand across scruff along his jaw. “But I don’t think we should be worrying about how it looks at this point. I think we need to help her, and if she really is past needing our help, then we need to figure out how she got there and how worried we need to be about it.”

“How _worried_ we need to be?”

Sam meets his brother’s eyes with a sobering expression. It sends a shiver down Dean’s spine. “There is nothing good that could have happened that fast to have made all of her problems go away.”

Dean nods slowly, finally on the same page as his brother. “We need to call Cas.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean calls Cas and Jack back to the bunker.

“Understood,” Cas’s voice rumbles over the quiet hum of the car engine. Jack sits next to him in the passenger seat, his hands folded politely in his lap, his eyebrows gathered together at the center of his forehead in concern. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Cas hangs up and tosses the cell onto the dashboard. He steers with one hand while rubbing his forehead with the other.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack asks, his eyes locked on his surrogate father. “Is she okay?”

Cas tries his best to meet Jack’s eyes while still keeping his on the road. “They’re not sure. They say something happened to her, but they don’t know what. They say she’s changed.”

Jack shakes his head. “Changed how?”

Cas sighs deeply and drags his hand down his face. “They don’t know that either. They just said she’s different, and they need me to take a look at her.”

“But…” Jack stares down at his hands for a moment, trying to understand. “You’re not a doctor. Shouldn’t they take her to a doctor?”

If he could smile at Jack’s innocence, he would, but Cas is too concerned to do much more than scowl. “Unfortunately, it’s not a doctor sort of problem. Or it might have started with one, which means a doctor is the last thing she needs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dean said she went to see a therapist before the… change.”

Jack nods, pursing his lips. They’re silent for a moment, focusing on the road as it blurs past. Then Jack turns back to Cas. “Castiel, what’s a therapist?”

Cas tightens his grip on the wheel. It’s hard enough for him to understand the machinations of humanity 80% of the time without also having to explain it to Jack. It’s not that he resents Jack’s questions—it’s quite the opposite, in fact—it’s his fear that he’ll somehow get it wrong. He doesn’t want to get it wrong with Jack. He can’t get it wrong. He draws in a deep breath and tries to think of how best to explain a therapist when he’s not even sure he understands it himself.

“A therapist,” he says, “is… It’s like a friend you pay.”

“Oh!” Jack nods, seeming to understand. He’s quiet again. Cas smiles to himself, satisfied by his answer. “So it’s like a prostitute,” he finishes.

Cas nearly drives off the road. Jack grips the door handle in terror while the angel gets the car back under control.

“No, it is NOT like a prostitute,” Cas finally says, having straightened the wheels enough to feel certain he’s not about to kill himself and do whatever a car accident at 70 would do to a Nephilim.

Jack looks hurt and confused. “But, Dean said a prostitute was like someone you pay to be your friend for a little while.”

“Dean **told you that**?” _I am going to beat the hell out of him when I get back to the bunker_ , is the part he doesn’t say out loud.

“Well, I asked,” Jack stammers. His hands are back in his lap, and he fixes his eyes on them. “I met one of them once when he had finished paying her to be friends with him. That’s what he said she was.”

Cas seethes quietly in the driver’s seat. Of all the stupid, idiotic things to say to Jack… And just what the hell was he doing bringing the kid around prostitutes to begin with? Oh boy, they were gonna have words later.

“I’m sorry, I’ve upset you,” Jack murmurs.

"No," Cas’ face softens immediately. “No, Jack, you haven’t upset me at all. Look, there is nothing wrong with prostitutes, but a therapist and a prostitute are not the same thing. A therapist is someone you pay to listen to your problems.”

Jack’s nodding, but his face is screwed up like he’s having a hard time understanding the idea. “Someone you pay to listen to your problems?”

“Yes,” Cas concurs.

“But… isn’t that what she has us for?”

And that basically sums up Cas’ entire feelings about the matter. Why hadn’t you turned to them with whatever problems you were having? Sure, it was the unspoken mantra of Team Free Will to keep it bottled up until it explodes, but when it comes down to it—really, truly comes down to it—the serious stuff always comes out eventually. The fact that it hadn’t with you worries him. It worries him a lot more than he wants to let on. After all, Jack is still there staring at him, waiting to take his own cues from Cas’ reaction, and making the wrong move right now could make this entire mess ten times worse.

“Sometimes,” Cas starts, unsure of where he’s going with this, “people need to talk to… not-their-friends about the things that are bothering them. They need to talk to people who aren’t as close to the problem to get clarity on the subject.”

“Are we the problem?” Jack’s voice is quiet, hurt.

Cas’ heart breaks, and he looks away from the road long enough to make prolonged eye contact with the boy. “No, Jack. We are not the problem.

"When we get back, we will find out what the problem is, and we will fix it.”

“Like we always do,” Jack finishes, a dim smile on his face.

“Like we always do,” Cas agrees.

He slows the car down at the next turn and pulls onto the highway that will take them back to Lebanon.

 _Like we always do_ , he thinks. He just wishes he could believe it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth comes out.

You walk back into the bunker about six hours after Sam heard you drive away, a twelve pack of something dark and malty tucked under your arm. There’s blood on your boots and jeans, but you haven’t had time to notice or care. You’re sure it’ll freak the boys out, but what’s done is done and the worst they can do now is grumble their disapproval at you from across a cold, empty table. If you’re lucky, they’ll be busy, and you’ll be able to sneak in and change before they catch the splatter. You’ll still get the third degree, sure, but it’ll be a lot easier going down without the CSI forensics team getting involved.

Unfortunately, you realize as soon as you start your way down the metal staircase, luck is not on your side today.

Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack are all waiting at the bottom in various positions of concern. It’s a fairly poetic tableau when you think about it, or it would be if it weren’t about to lead to something irritating enough to make you pull all of your hair out.

_Where have you been?_

_Why didn’t you tell us where you were going?_

_Is that blood on your shirt?_

_What the hell have you been doing?_

You run through all the questions you know they’ll ask as you descend, then nonchalantly place the beer on the table nearest you and turn to face the room.

“All right, friends and neighbors,” you say, your voice managing to be both chipper and sarcastic at the same time, “let’s have it.”

Nobody speaks. Well, that’s surprising. You didn’t think you were capable of surprise at this point, but apparently old habits die hard. You lean against the edge of the table next to your beer and cross your arms, trying to make eye contact with someone, anyone, in the room. But they’re all refusing to look at you. Huh. Definitely not what you expected.

“Anybody home?” you press on. If you had the capacity to be nervous, you’re sure you’d be shaking right now. There is definitely something off about this little ambush, and you feel like you’ve been left out of a very important secret. You don’t like being left out. You don’t like it one bit.

“Someone better start talking,” you demand, your voice growing darker. “Now.”

Surprisingly, Jack is the one who moves first. “There is something wrong with you,” he says in a voice you can tell he’s trying to borrow from Cas. It doesn’t fit him; it’s about three sizes too big, and a little long in the sleeve. It’s mildly adorable at least. Or it would be, if you gave a damn.

You nod slowly, looking pointedly around the group. “Neat.” When the silence continues, you roll your eyes and pick your beer back up. “Well, good talk guys. Let’s do it again sometime.”

You move past your stoic comrades toward the kitchen, when someone catches your arm. It’s Dean. His grip is strong, nearly to the point of hurting. You look up and see he’s finally ready to meet your eyes. You don’t like what you see there.

“No,” he says simply. “Sit down.”

You’re more amused than intimidated at this point, so you set the beer back down (damn it, it’s going to get warm soon if you’re not careful), pull out a chair, and settle in for the inevitable lecture series you’re about to get from the professors of Free Will University.

“What?” you mewl, a smile playing across your lips. “You’re mad I took off this afternoon?”

Dean doesn’t respond. Instead, he walks back to the group and takes his place beside Sam. Jack stands to the left of them, leaving Castiel standing slightly in front of them all. Oh, you do not like this at all.

“Someone tell me what’s going on,” you demand, your voice starting to waiver. You’re not scared, of course, you’re well past that, but you are nervous. Something has been happening behind your back, and you’ve got the feeling it’s about to come to a head.

“Cas,” Dean commands, his voice dark and gruff.

Cas nods, and makes a move toward you as he rolls up the right sleeve of his overcoat.

You’re up in a second, but Cas flicks two fingers at you and forces you back in the chair hard enough that it hurts. “What the fuck—”

But before you can complain, Cas has crossed the space between you and has his right hand flat against your chest. Your heart is pounding against your ribs. What the fuck is going on? And why is everyone else staring at you like they’re suddenly terrified for your life?

Then you remember.

You remember when Sam came back from Hell, soulless. You remember what Cas had to do to figure it out. And you realize the same thing is about to happen to you.

You open your mouth to protest the instant Castiel plunges his hand into you. The pain is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. You scream with every bit of energy you have. The light is blinding you, blinding all of you except for Cas, whose eyes remain focused on the “hole” in your torso with laser-like precision. You’re on the verge of passing out when he finally pulls his hand back, and you collapse forward onto the floor. Nobody moves forward to help you.

“It’s as you suspected,” Cas says, rolling his sleeve back down. He kneels beside you, sweeping your hair out of your face as he struggles to move you into a sitting position. “She has no soul.”

You turn enough to rest your head on your forearms on the seat of the chair you’ve just fallen out of, your breathing loud and labored. Your head is pounding. Your chest feels like it’s just been ripped open and stapled back together. The voices in the room sound like they’re coming to you from down a long hallway. You can barely move.

Sam leans forward onto the table next to him like he’s having a hard time keeping himself upright. Cas remains at your feet, silent and staring. Jack turns between them all with concern, unsure of what any of this means or how he’s meant to respond. Dean is the only one who doesn’t react. He stands there staring at you, nostrils flaring.

Then suddenly he turns and punches a neat little dent into the wall. He storms out of the room without another word. Cas stands quickly and follows after him.

“Kid,” Sam finally says, “how did this happen?”

“No,” you mumble, holding your face in your hands, trying to stop the room from spinning. “It was a spell. That’s all it was. It was a spell.”

Sam turns to Jack, “Go get them back in here,” he commands. Jack nods and moves quickly in the direction Dean and Cas have gone.

When the room is empty except the two of you, Sam pushes himself upright, places you properly back in the chair, and comes to kneel at your side. Even from this height, his head is almost at the same level as yours. Your head lolls to the side and you have to put your forehead down on the table to keep your neck from snapping.

“You need to tell me everything.”

“It was just a spell,” you continue to protest. “She didn’t say anything about my soul. She said…” you struggle to catch your breath again. Sam places his hand on your knee to steady you. It does nothing. “She said she could take it all away. She said I’d never need to feel that way again.” You raise your head slowly and stare so deeply into Sam’s eyes, it scares him. “She did what she promised, Sam.”

“No,” he says, stroking your hair. It’s damp with sweat. “No, she didn’t. She lied to you. I don’t know how she did it, but this isn’t just a spell. This is serious.”

“The way I was feeling was serious,” you counter, feeling some of your strength starting to return. “ _That_ was serious. And now I will never feel that way again. I don’t care how she did it. I don’t care what she did. I just care that it worked.”

“You say that now,” he says, his hand finally coming to stop behind your neck. It’s a strangely intimate moment, but it doesn't mean anything to you. “But it doesn’t stop here. It doesn’t stop with feeling nothing. Soon, it turns you into something you’re not. It turns you into something dark.”

“No,” you growl as you continue to feel more like your new self. “It turned _you_ into something dark. Len was fine. Donatello is fine. I’m going to be fine.”

“You’re kidding yourself if you think that.”

You smirk. You’re feeling much, much better now. You reach up to his hand at the nape of your neck and squeeze, hard. “What exactly are you going to do about it, Sammy?”

Sam’s eyes leave yours and dart just above your head. Before you have time to turn around or look up, there’s a crackling sound and your world goes black. You slump forward and Sam catches you in his arms.

Dean stands behind you on the other side of the table with something that looks like a mix between a stun gun and a cattle prod in his hands. As soon as you’re out, he heaves a shuddering breath. The ghost of an expression flits across his face—it’s the look of a man who is about to break down in tears—and then it's gone. Cas is by his side, presumably riding shotgun in case the stun gun gambit didn’t play out. He’s watching you with pity in his deep, blue eyes.

“Take her to her room,” he says to Sam. “Lock it from the outside.”

“Shouldn’t we take her to the dungeon?” Sam asks, holding your limp form and looking like something out of a Gothic romance.

“I don’t want to start treating her like a criminal until she starts acting like one,” he answers. “We keep an eye on her, keep her on lockdown. She doesn’t leave this bunker until we figure this out, and she’s never out of sight of at least one of us.” He turns to Jack, who looks so shaken by the entire turn of events he’s about to run. “That includes you, kiddo.” Jack swallows and nods, and Dean feels a little proud at the kid’s bravado, false or not.

“She’ll be furious when she wakes up,” Cas interjects, already worried for what comes next.

“So we need to be ready for her.”

The group stares at Dean in silence. Nobody moves. This is not territory any of them ever wanted to find themselves in again, yet here they are.

“Guys, it’s still her, and we are going to fix this. We are going to fix her like we fixed Sam.”

Still, no one responds.

“We _will_ fix this.”

As if it’s the final word on the subject, they all leave the room: Sam carries you down the hall to your bedroom, Castiel wanders in the direction of the dungeon, and Jack follows the angel silently. Only Dean remains.

He kicks out the chair in which you were sitting and slumps into it. Then he reaches behind him, rips a beer free from your case, and starts drinking. He’s not sure when he’s going to stop.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up the morning after being stun-gunned with a few questions for Dean.

You wake up with a splitting headache and the feeling that something has punched a great big hole in through your chest that they’ve since patched up with duct tape. With a groan, you manage to turn yourself over far enough to stare at a dark, unlit, concrete ceiling. You focus on the cracks for a few minutes, about as long as it takes you to remember where you are—your own bedroom. It takes a few minutes longer to remember why and how you got there, and you shoot upright like a rod as soon as it comes to you.

You sit there for another moment, piecing the events of the previous… (night? day? Right now, you’re not sure what time it is) together, before noticing with a flash of red-hot embarrassment that you’re in your pajamas. You certainly weren’t wearing PJs when Dean Winchester cattle-prodded you into unconsciousness, which means one of the boys (at _least_ one, you tell yourself) had to have carried you in here, undressed you, redressed you, and then tucked you into bed.

“Thanks for the fucking courtesy, you creeps,” you mutter to yourself, swinging your feet over the side of the bed.

Your first attempt to stand doesn’t go very well, and you end up flat on your ass on the cold cement floor. The shock of the cold at least helps bring you back to yourself fairly quickly. Who would have thought having an angel shove his mojo hand into your chest cavity before being electrified with god knows how many volts could have such a negative effect on your health the next morning? You curse the three of them again under your breath and struggle to stand. It feels like a hangover, only worse. In fact, you’d KILL to be hungover right now. This is grade A bullshit, and you’re ready to give them a piece of your mind about it before taking a swing at each and every one of their pretty-boy faces.

When you finally feel steady on your legs, you pad over to the door, your bare feet slapping angrily against the ground. You reach forward to pull open the door, fully expecting it to be locked, and nearly fall on your ass again when the thing actually swings open.

You stand there in shock, not sure what to do with the righteous anger you’d drummed up walking over from your bed. You stick your head into the hallway and strain to hear whatever’s going on in the bunker, but it’s silent. That can’t be right. There’s no way in hell after going through all that they’d leave you alone here with your door unlocked. This is either a trap or a test. Either way, you don’t like it, and either way, you’re sure you’re not going to pass.

You step into the hallway, wincing at the brightness compared to the dim glow of your bedroom. You’re going to be sure to mention that in your diatribe, too. They’re going to hear all of it, and it’s only going to get worse from there.

By the time you get to the kitchen, you’re genuinely starting to wonder what the fuck is going on. You haven’t seen any sign of any of your boys—zero signs of life. Did the rapture happen while you were under? You don’t figure any of them would be contenders for it at this point, but, hey, they’re not the ones without a soul.

The thought stops you cold.

That’s right. That’s what this was really all about. That’s what the pain and betrayal and downright trickery was for—

You, kid, are soulless.

You stop at the coffee maker and replay your conversation with Sam. The coffee should have been hot enough to scald, and yet you drank it with no problem. You casually mentioned you’d been considering suicide for months like you were recommending a really great magazine article.

Then you’d taken off for the day without a word, found yourself a nest, and taken out three vampires by yourself. You didn’t even know if they’d been hunting when you’d found them. It hadn’t mattered. What mattered was the killing. What mattered was the hunt.

Then the ambush. And the chest-bursting. And the betrayal. And, just before Dean’s little trick with the stun gun, you had grabbed Sam’s hand when he was trying to comfort you and squeezed. If Dean hadn’t knocked you out when he had, you would have kept going. You would have hurt Sam. Sam, who was like your brother. Sam, who was only trying to help you.

Sam, you presume, who had then carried you into your room and undressed you while you were unconscious and likely locked you in overnight.

So why was the door open now?

You’ve moved through the kitchen, unaware of your own attempts to move as silently as possible. You don’t want the boys to know you’re awake. After yesterday(?), you can’t trust them as far as you can throw them. With a smile, you realize, you can probably throw them a lot farther now. As you recall, being soulless has its benefits.

When you make it back to the library, you finally see the first sign of life—the back of Dean’s head, facing away from you, working on what looks like at least his seventh beer.

You stop cold and stare at him, unmoving, unblinking.

To an uninitiated observer, it must be a horrifying sight.

Dean polishes off the rest of the beer (his eighth, to be exact), and sighs deeply into the silence of the place. Jack and Cas have gone out for provisions and, as far as he knows, you and Sam are still sound asleep. They more or less took shifts last night, with Cas standing watch the longest as the only who literally needed no sleep to get through the night. Jack had been in and out intermittently, but was having a hard time wrapping his head around what was happening. They all were, to be honest, but at least the rest of them had all been through it before, more times than they would have wanted. To Jack, it was new, confusing, and ultimately terrifying. Here he was, still learning the basic concepts of good and bad, only to discover there had been a fun, massive piece of the puzzle that could simply be removed and screw up the entirety of human ethics at any time.

Sam stayed in your room with you longer than any of them had predicted he would. Maybe they should have expected it. After all, this was something that had happened to him. He could identify with everything you were experiencing, especially the desperation to stay “broken.” He’d come out after about an hour and bolted the door from the outside like Dean had asked him to, then gone straight into his room without another word.

Dean, for his part, drank and slept intermittently until he lost track of both time and consciousness. Half of his dreams, he’s pretty sure he’d had while he was awake. He is terrified, confused, and, worst of all, so pissed off at you he can barely see straight.

He knows it isn’t fair, not after everything you’ve been through, and certainly not after he’d shirked his responsibility to check in on you when he saw you so clearly falling apart, but he’s angry nonetheless. He’s lost so much in the past several months: Castiel, Crowley, Missouri, his own mother. He can’t lose you too. He won’t. Not if he can help it. And it’s that mixture of anger, guilt, and desperation that leads him to unlock your door just after dawn.

He’s so lost in thought, he almost doesn’t catch the sound of you padding up to his chair.

Almost.

“You’re awake,” he says, setting his empty down next to the others.

You stop directly behind him, so close the back of his head is grazing your chest.

“I’m conscious,” you say. “‘Awake’ implies that I slept.” You grab chair next to him and swing it around so it’s facing him. “We both know I don’t do that anymore.” You sink into the chair and cross your legs, smiling.

“Thought you’d be pissed,” Dean says, his tone and demeanor very careful.

“More impressed than pissed,” you say, your smile stretching into a very rude smirk. “That was damn quick thinking with the stun gun. How did you know it would work?”

“I didn’t,” he shrugs, leaning forward so his body is closer to yours. Your knees bump each other gently. “Cas had a pair of handcuffs ready to go in case it went wrong.”

“Ooh,” you grin, “I like the sound of that.” Dean smirks back at you for a moment, and then his expression grows dark.

“Why’d you do it, kid?” He asks, his eyes earnestly searching yours for an answer.

“I didn’t,” you say simply, uncrossing your legs and sitting with them spread as wide as Dean’s in a deliberate impression of him. Dean doesn’t respond, and you let him squirm in the silence before continuing. “I wanted a way out; she offered one.”

“But your _soul—”_ he starts. You cut him off.

“She offered me a _spell_. I never asked to have my soul removed. I never suggested it, and I sure as hell didn’t agree to it.”

He shakes his head. “Then I guess what I don’t understand is, when you realized something was wrong, why didn’t you do something about it?”

“ _Wrong?_ ” You repeat. You can’t possibly have heard him correctly. “Dean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me.”

“Kid, you don’t have a soul!” he shouts.

“And what the hell is wrong with that?” You kick back the chair and jump to your feet. “Tell me, Dean, what the hell is so fucking wrong with not having a soul if it means I’m not in pain from the second I open my eyes in the morning to the second I go to sleep? What is wrong with not having a soul if I can sit around and ask myself what Mr. Rogers or Bill Nye the Science Guy would do and stay on the right track? If you ask me, the only problem with me not having a soul is that YOU have a problem with it.”

Dean is silent. He has no response.

“I know the difference between right and wrong, Dean. I’m not going to go on a killing spree or start punching babies,” you start pacing in front of him, your movements a little more desperate than you realize they’re coming across. Dean, however, notices. “I’ll be a better hunter. I’ll stop putting myself last. I’ll become my own top priority, which you and Sam have been pushing me to do for years.

“You know, I thought the spell she did was just some feel-good charm that would wear off eventually, but now I see the real benefit of what Juliet’s done. I’m free from not just the heartache and the depression, but from all the bullshit that kept me from being the best version of myself I can be.”

“Juliet?” Dean asks cautiously, watching you like one would watch a lion on safari, knowing that so much can go wrong in so little time if even the slightest thing goes off.

You’re still long enough to look him in the eyes. “My therapist. The witch. The one who did this to me.” You stop. “FOR me,” you correct yourself.

“This is good for me,” you say, moving a little closer to Dean. “In a way, I think it’s good for all of us.” You look at him for a long time, taking all of him in. The way he watches you with such concern is really quite sweet. Misguided, but sweet. His green eyes catch the light in such a way as to make them look alive. For the first time in a while, he’s not swathed in layers of flannel; he’s only wearing a black t-shirt, and it shows off his torso to great effect.

You sigh, thinking back to when you were a teenager. You would have done anything to be with him, never mind how closely you two were raised. He was your first crush, your ONLY crush for a very long time, and, without realizing it, he’s become the measuring stick for every man you’ve been with since you started sleeping around when you were seventeen. The first guy you were with even looked a little like Dean, if you’re being honest with yourself… and, let’s face it, you really don’t have a choice of being honest with yourself at this point.

So what’s stopping you now? you think, still taking him in. He’s regarding you even more warily now that you’ve gone quiet, but he hasn’t moved. What’s stopping you from taking him here, now, in this library, while his brother sleeps downstairs? A part of you has always wanted Dean, and you’ve seen it in the way he looks at you that a part of him has always wanted you too. It would be so easy to have him. So worth it. And haven’t you earned yourself a piece of this after so many years of watching him taking home skank after skank, knowing all the while he could have just given in and given both of you what you wanted, no strings attached?

Dean notices the change in your movements. There’s something… off… about them. Before, he would have said you were stalking him, like a predator stalks its prey, but now it’s… Well, it’s nothing he’s ever seen in you before. He’s watching you watching him like you’re wondering where you could touch him that could bring him to his knees, but that can’t be right. Soul or no soul, the two of you might as well be siblings, and it’s a line he’s sure you’ll never cross.

Right?

Well, you sure knock that notion right out of his head when you lean down, grab the back of his head, and press your lips against his. It catches him completely off guard, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s kissing you back, planting his strong hands firmly along your jawline and pulling you into him. You slip your tongue into his mouth and he makes a delightful sound that pleases you so god damn much you almost burst into laughter over pleasure of it.

He pushes you away from him so fast you almost fall over.

“God damn it,” he says, out of breath. “No. We are not doing this.” He’s disgusted with himself, or trying to convince himself he is. The bulge in his jeans suggest otherwise.

You notice and laugh. Your mouth is red and swollen from kissing him; his is too. And his face is burning hot with embarrassment. You regain your footing and move back to him. He puts his hands up to stop you, and you grab them and move them to your waist. When he tries to pull them back, you hold them fast.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” you tell him. “I know you want this. HAVE wanted this. I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me since I started growing tits. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

His face flashes scarlet, and he yanks his hands away from you hard enough to hurt himself.  
“No,” he repeats, but his voice lacks the conviction he knows it should have.

“Oh, come on, Dean,” you chide playfully. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

“Thinking about it and wanting it are two different things. You're practically my little sister.” God damn it, why didn’t he keep the door bolted like he should have done? Why did he think letting you out to prove they still trusted you was a good idea?

“Yeeeeah,” you say, sliding onto his lap and wrapping your arms around his neck, “But I’m not **actually** your sister, so there’s really nothing wrong with this.”

“Believe me, kid, there is so much wrong with this, I don’t even know where to start.” He pushes you off, trying to be as gentle as he can for both your sakes.

You shrug and turn away from him. “It was good enough for Sam,” you mention casually, smoothing your shirt down over your belly.

Dean’s heart drops into his stomach. “What?”

“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” When you turn back to face him, you have the most insincere look of concern on your face Dean has ever seen. It makes his insides turn. “When you died, the—gee, was it the third or fourth time?” You rest your ass against the table in front of him and lean back to support your weight on your arms. “Well, whatever time turned you into a demon, at any rate—your goody two-shoes brother screwed me six ways from Sunday to get over the pain of losing you.” You watch as every one of Dean’s emotions plays across his face, and it makes you glad to see him in such distress after turning you down. It’s almost better getting off on hurting him for rejecting you than it would have been to actually screw his brains out on one of the library tables. “Don’t get me wrong,” you go on, sounding perfectly casual about the whole thing, “I wanted it too, but thinking of me as his sister 99% of the time didn’t seem to matter when he needed it most. And I figured, seeing it as you just lost your mom—”

“I don’t want to hear this.” Dean’s on his feet, panicked, obviously looking for an escape.

“I’m kind of surprised he didn’t tell you, to be honest,” you call out as he pushes past you to leave through the kitchen. “I thought you two shared everything.”

“Kind of thought you’d end up sharing me too,” you shout after him.

Dean stops and whirls around to face you. “This isn’t you talking,” he says, advancing on you in pure outrage and grabbing you by the shoulders.

“Oh no, Dean, this is ALL me talking. This is me without any filter. Without anything getting in the way of what’s really going through my head. Pure Id, sweetheart. Exactly the way it should be.” You glance down at where he’s holding you and smirk. “You gonna stun gun me again?”

He releases you immediately, disgusted with himself. He’s about to say something terrible, something he knows he’ll regret, when he’s saved by the arrival of Jack and Cas walking through the bunker door.

“Damn,” you whine, grin plastered on your face. “Calvary’s arrived.”

Dean backs away from you so quickly he nearly trips over his own feet. Cas is running down the stairs as fast as his legs can carry him. You, for your part, stand exactly where you are, hands up in surrender.

“Get her away from me,” Dean commands, his voice cracking.

“Where?” Cas asks, finally reaching you and taking hold of your arms not far below where Dean had just been squeezing them. He has no idea what’s happened, but seeing Dean this shaken disturbs him to the very core.

“Anywhere else,” he answers, moving so his back is pressed solidly against the wall and he’s well out of your arms’ reach. “Take her to the dungeon. Make sure she’s chained up. Do it now.”

Cas nods, not saying another word. He starts to manhandle you out of the room, but you’re happy enough to go quietly. When you’re out of sight, Dean buries his face in his hands and shudders, completely, thoroughly shaken.

Jack, who still hasn’t moved from the front door, tries his best to take this all in as he watches it happen. As soon as he and Dean are alone, he speaks. “Are you o—”

“No,” Dean interrupts. “I am worlds away from okay.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam have some things they need to talk about.

Sam’s deep in a dreamless sleep when he’s awakened by the crashing sound of his door slamming into the wall. He’s up in an instant, hand under his pillow on his gun and ready to draw. His hand falls away however, when he sees his target is his big brother, standing in the doorway with murder etched into his face.

“Dean, what—”

Dean cuts him off as soon as he opens his mouth. “Did you sleep with her?”

The question catches him so off guard, he can’t do anything but open his mouth and stare back at Dean in silence.

“I’m not asking you again, Sammy,” Dean’s voice is low, but Sam can hear the barely contained rage in it as though he were screaming it at him.

“Dean, I don’t know—" He tries to stand, and Dean starts forward with a hand out as if to stop him. He stays exactly where he is, watching his brother move like a wild animal about to attack.

“Have. You. Had. Sex. With. Her?”

Sam finally understands. He swallows hard. The question ruins him. It takes him a moment to find his voice. “Yes.”

Dean’s face twists with rage. “You son of a bitch,” he roars, balling his hands into fists. He takes a step toward his brother, then stops himself and turns his back on him. Sam can see his shoulders shaking as he tries to calm himself. When he has himself a little more under control, Dean turns back around and looks at Sam like he’s staring at a monster. “Do you know how messed up that is? She might as well be our kid sister.”

Sam, for his part, shrinks into himself. His eyes drop to his hands, which he wrings guiltily in front of himself. “You think I don’t know that?”

Dean laughs, and it’s not a pleasant sound. “Apparently not, since you still fucked her.”

Sam’s head snaps up and he makes direct eye contact with Dean. The sinking feeling in his stomach is getting worse every second. How did he wake up to this? What had happened while he was asleep, for fuck’s sake? And, more important, how the hell is he supposed to explain this to his brother in a way that makes it in any way okay? “We agreed it wasn’t going to change anything,” he finally says, his voice soft.

“Oh, you _agreed_ on that, did you?” Dean’s raises his upper lip in disgust.

Sam’s finally caught up enough emotionally to get riled up himself. “You were dead, Dean!” It doesn’t make it better, of course, but who is Dean to judge what went on between the two of you when you literally had nowhere else to turn? “What the hell else were we supposed to do?”

Dean walks fully into the room and slams the door behind him. He advances on Sam as he speaks, talking to him like he’s admonishing a child. His voice is dripping with venom and sarcasm. “You get drunk and you cry like a normal person. You don’t take advantage—“

Sam’s on his feet now, which stops Dean in his tracks. “Is that what this is about? You think I took advantage of her?” He has to laugh at that, and he can see how much it infuriates Dean. “You need to give us both more credit than that.”

Dean shakes his head. “No, you don’t get credit for _anything_ ,” he growls. “Not when I have to hear it from _her_ ,” he gestures emphatically to the closed door, “and only after she’s lost her soul.” They’re both silent except for the sounds of them breathing. “You should have told me,” he finally says, quiet, empty, without even a trace of anger.

Sam doesn’t know how to respond. He runs his hands through his hair, and shakes his head. “I didn’t think it would matter.”

That pisses Dean off all over again. “Of course it matters, Sammy. Everything that happens between us matters!”

“I’m sorry!” Sam shouts, out of options. What does Dean want him to do, beg for forgiveness for something he doesn’t even consider wrong? Something he doesn't actually believe was a mistake? “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I fucked her, if that's what you want to hear! Whatever it is you want me to be sorry about, I am sorry for it!” The silence envelops them again.

Sam is lost for words now. He sits down on the edge of his bed and tries to think his way back to two days ago. How had everything gone so awry so quickly? How was it possible that he was sitting here having to explain to Dean that he’d had sex with you almost half a decade ago? That thought sticks with him. Something doesn’t sit right with him about it. He stares the question at Dean: “Why did this even come up?”

That seems to be the key. Suddenly, all the anger is out of Dean. He just looks tired. Shaken. Disturbed. He opens his mouth, then shuts it before trying again. “She tried…” His voice dies in his throat. He doesn’t want to say it, but he really doesn’t have a choice now. “She came on…” There really is no good way to phrase it. “She tried to get me to fuck her.” It sounds so awful, so _horrible_ , he immediately wishes he could take it back.

“She _what?_ ” There’s a ringing in Sam’s ears as soon as the words pass Dean’s lips. It’s so vulgar, so unlike you, he can’t even process the information.

“I don’t know,” Dean continues. His voice is high, panicked. “She kissed me, she sat on my lap and…” He has to stop and collect himself. “It was like she was a different person. Even if I had wanted to—”

“Did you?” Sam asks, quietly.

Dean avoids the question. “Even if I had wanted to, it wasn't her. It wouldn’t have been right.

“So I turned her down, best I could,” he goes on. “And then she told me. Said it had been good enough for you." He stops, nearly choking on his next words: "Said way more than I needed to hear.” Sam’s face flashes red and he has to look away from his brother to keep his composure.

“You want to know the worst part, Sammy? I did want it. And I was jealous. As sick as it is, I’m jealous.” There it is. The whole, awful truth. Dean sits down on the bed next to Sam, sinking down so low his head is nearly between his knees.

Sam watches his brother deflate with the twist of a knife in his heart. It kills him to see him like this, to hear him admit to things he should never have to admit to. To know that that they’ve been forced to confront each other on one of the shittiest things that could ever possibly come between them. He takes a deep breath before speaking again. “She’s doing this on purpose.” It’s obvious now. Stupidly, painfully obvious. He was an idiot not to expect this to happen.

Dean nods, feeling just as played. “I know.”

“Which means she’s more dangerous than any of us thought.” They both take a minute to consider the severity of the fact. It’s heavy. The room suddenly feels darker, even though nothing about it has changed.

Dean nods again.

“I thought we had some time, maybe,” he murmurs. “It took you months to go full dark side. And she’s right—Len and Donatello were both fine, comparatively speaking. I didn’t realize we’d lose her this quickly.”

“Whatever she’s been going through…” Sam starts, his brain starting to whir like a supercomputer as he puts it all together, “…it’s gotta be causing her to deteriorate faster than she might under normal circumstances.” It makes more sense than anything. After all, what the hell do they know about removing souls from severely depressed or suicidal people? There isn't anything in the lore about it. Hell, there's hardly any lore on soullessness to begin with, never mind anything they can consider 100% reliable. “We need to figure out how to get her soul back, now,” he concludes, but his heart still sinks, knowing the task is, at best, monumental.

Dean is quiet for a long time before he finally answers. “We need to find the therapist. The witch," he corrects himself.

“How do we do that?” Sam asks, his voice hollow and hopeless. “The yellow pages?”

“She gave me a name: Juliet.” Dean finally lifts his head up, and that terrible, lost look Sam had seen has been replaced by an expression of resolve. “I don’t think she meant to, which means she’s screwing up, which means we can still get the drop on her when we need it. We start asking around. Someone like that’s gonna be drawing some kind of attention to herself.”

Sam nods now. “Right… But what do we do if she’s left town?”

Dean stands up and walks to the door. He opens it and steps into the hallway. “We find her before that happens. And then we make her fix this.”

He slams the door shut, leaving Sam alone with his thoughts.


	9. Chapter  9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They lock you away and come up with a plan. Castiel deals with some unresolved issues.

The cold steel of the cuff bites into your skin as Castiel straps your left arm to the chair at the center of the Devil’s Trap in the dungeon. It’s almost enough painful enough to make you cry out. The one he snaps onto your right wrist succeeds. You yelp, jerking back as much as the restraints will allow you to.

“Cas,” you say, wincing against the ache, “I never knew you were such a top.”

“Shut up,” he orders as he drops to his knees to secure your legs to the chair as well.

You pout, kicking your feet to make it more difficult for him. He grabs you by the ankle hard enough to make you gasp. The pain is intense. It’s actually enough to make you behave for a moment. When he’s finished, you’re tied tightly enough that the only thing you can really move without serious strain is your head.

“You’re hurting me,” you growl, in legitimate discomfort.

“Good,” he says, coming to stand in front of you. He places an arm on either side of you and leans in so your faces are almost touching. “Then maybe you’ll start to understand how serious this is.”

“I think you’re enjoying this,” you say, and the spark of recognition you see in his eyes tell you you’re right. As the realization spreads across your face, Cas’ bravado fades and he pulls away, averting his gaze as quickly as he can manage.

You can’t help it. You laugh, the sound high and loud and joyous. “Oh, this is beautiful!” It still hurts you to do anything but sit absolutely still, but you don’t care. This is far too good. Watching the self-righteous angel of the lord stoop so low as to get off on hurting you fills your soulless little heart with glee. “Castiel, the one who gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition, getting his jollies hurting an innocent little girl who just happened to upset his boyfriend.”

Cas is back on you in an instant, grabbing your hair and jerking your head back so your words are cut off with a wet choke. “Don't mistake what I’m doing for ‘getting my jollies.’ You are hurting my friends, and I will not stand for it.”

You’re quiet for a few seconds, taking in what he’s just said. “I thought I was your friend,” you say softly.

“You are,” he says simply, releasing his grip. “You were, at any rate.” He walks to the outside of the Devil’s Trap and crosses his arms as he stares at you. “I don’t know who you are right now.”

“And you don’t know how to react,” you finish, actually interested in the idea. It’s maybe the first time since you’ve lost your soul that something has truly captured your imagination. Sam and Dean have made their choice—they’re clearly going to fight for you, help you at any cost. You know Jack will follow them blindly without having to think twice about it. But Cas…

Cas doesn’t know you, and therefore he doesn’t know what to do with you. Or _to_ you. He’s willing to hurt you to see that you stop hurting everyone else, and not just in the sense of knocking you out until he figures out what to do next. He’s willing to make you hurt to make you understand what you’re doing to the others.

“You’re punishing me,” you realize with genuine shock. Cas is silent as he makes and maintains eye contact with you. You search his eyes, his face, and what you see there completely captivates you. “And not just for hurting Dean. You’re punishing me for losing my soul.”

It’s like you’ve flipped a switch, and you very quickly wish you hadn’t. “God gave you a gift,” he yells, losing all sense of composure, “And you’ve thrown it away. You’ve taken the free will you were given and thrown it in the face of your creator—thrown it in the face of every one of us who had to fight for that same right.” He’s back in your face now, leaning over you, his hands clamped over yours like vices. “After everything you’ve been through and fought for, after everything the Winchesters and I have done for you, _this is your solution_?” He pushes the chair back so hard it slides backwards across the room and slams into the wall behind you. The impact knocks you senseless for a moment, and you’re stunned into silence.

Cas remains exactly where he is, breathing slowly through his nostrils as he tries to regain his composure. You don’t know what to say. Soul or no soul, you are, at this moment, utterly afraid of him.

A quiet knock comes on the door.

“What?” Castiel barks, his voice reverberating off the walls.

The door opens just enough for you to see a sliver of Jack’s face. He casts a nervous glance at you, then turns his attention fully back to Cas. “Sam and Dean need to talk to you,” he says, “As long as she’s secure.”

Cas glares hard at you against the wall. You stare back silently. “She’s secure,” he says. With that, he turns on his heel and walks into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

“Should I lock it?” Jack asks.

“I said she’s secure,” Cas responds, his voice cold enough to send a chill through Jack. “Where are they?” he asks.

“They’re in the library,” Jack responds. He lets Castiel lead the way, a little afraid of him himself.

The instant Cas enters the library, Sam and Dean fall silent. They both regard him as if seeing him for the first time. There’s something borderline terrifying about his demeanor, and it casts a pall over the room.

Dean takes a moment to study Cas’ face and shudders at what he sees there. It’s the expression he saw when Cas nearly beat him to death for trying to say yes to Michael—the rage, the disappointment, the betrayal. In spite of everything, that look on Cas’ face immediately fills Dean with dread for you.

“What did you do to her?” he asks, and the question clearly catches both Jack and Sam off guard.

“Nothing,” Cas answers calmly. “Yet.”

“Cas—” Dean starts, but Cas cuts him off.

“I am willing to do whatever is necessary to stop her from doing whatever she is thinking of doing,” he says coldly. “Even if you aren’t.”

“Cas,” Sam interjects, “this isn’t a choice she made. This is something that was done to her.”

"You said she allowed her therapist to do this,” Cas argues.

Dean is the one who replies: “The therapist lied. She told her she was doing a spell. She never agreed to have her soul removed.”

“And you believe her?” Cas demands incredulously. “She has no soul, Dean. Every word that comes out of her mouth might as well be a lie.”

“She didn’t know a thing about it until you reached inside her, Cas,” Sam offers. “You had to have seen that.”

Cas looks back and forth between the two brothers, desperate to hold onto his indignation. He wants to stay furious. It’s so petty and human of him to be attached to his anger, but it’s easier than the alternative. It’s easier than the worry and the terror that comes with knowing you didn’t want this, that you were just so desperate to fix yourself that you’ve inadvertently become this… thing. What he sees in the Winchester’s eyes makes it impossible, however, and his composure breaks in a heartbeat. He crumbles internally, physically sinking into a chair and hanging his head in shame over what he’s just done to you in the dungeon.

Dean and Sam know better than to ask him questions at this point. Jack hangs his head and sinks into a chair himself. Cas, for his part, closes his eyes and waits for whatever will come next, the shame radiating from him like from a source of heat.

“We need to find the witch,” Sam says at length.

Cas nods. “Of course. That will be the first priority. I’ll go.” He pushes himself to a standing position.

Jack mirrors him. “We’ll all go.”

“No,” Cas snaps. Jack looks like he’s just been hit. “Jack, this witch is powerful enough to remove a human soul. There’s no telling what she would do if she could figure out what you are.”

“But I’m more powerful than a witch,” Jack protests, moving closer to the group. “You’ve all seen it. If she tries anything, I can hurt her.”

“Jack,” Dean turns to him, his voice as gentle as he can make it, “your powers are still completely unpredictable. There’s no telling what could go wrong if she tried something and you…”

“Lost control?” Jack finishes bitterly.

“It’s not a punishment, Jack,” Cas says, the irony of denying the idea of punishment immediately after trying to hurt you not lost on him. “It’s necessary. We don’t know what we’re up against.”

“But I can help you,” Jack presses on, his voice rising in desperation. “You _need_ my help.”

“We need your help here,” Sam answers, sounding almost like he’s begging. “We can’t leave her alone here, even tied up. There’s no telling what could happen if we leave her alone in the bunker, and if she tries anything, you can use your powers to stop her without hurting her or yourself.” Jack looks like he’s about to protest again, but Sam crosses to him and puts his hands firmly on Jack’s shoulders. “I believe in you. I believe you can do this. You love her, right?”

“Yes,” Jack says, reluctantly.

“Then I believe you can keep her safe if anything goes wrong.” He inadvertently casts a glance at Castiel. “I don’t think I can say that for the rest of us.”

Jack thinks about this for a while, and finally nods. “All right. I’ll stay here.”

“You’ll keep an eye on her?” Dean asks. “Keep her safe?”

“Yes,” Jack agrees. “I’ll keep her safe.”

“You need to be very careful, Jack," Cas warns as him he, Sam, and Dean start to prep themselves to leave. "The woman locked up in there is not the woman you know. She is not your friend, and she will say anything to get you to set her free.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Dean, and Cas track Juliet down to get some answers.

It takes them a couple of hours of talking to Lebanon’s more forthcoming citizens, but eventually Sam catches wind of a sweet, quiet therapist who does a good amount of her drinking at a local watering hole named Eddie’s. Said therapist is new in town, owns her own practice, and was recently seen talking to a woman matching your description. The lead is almost too good to be true, but they don’t have the luxury right now of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Anything they can chase down right now, they will.

Dean pulls Baby into the dingy lot next to Eddie’s and kills the engine. He, Sam, and Cas sit in awkward silence while they contemplate their next move. They haven’t said much to each other since leaving the bunker. What could they possibly have to talk about at this point? Should they discuss Cas practically hurling you into a wall in anger? Or maybe they could chat about you and Sam banging one out and hiding it from everyone for the last four years? Or, of course, they could always analyze Dean’s admission of jealousy over his brother having nailed you first.

Yeah, their silence is definitely better.

“Do you think we need badges?” Sam finally asks, glancing back and forth between the two other men. Cas quietly defers to Dean.

Dean shakes his head. “No, we do this straight. If she sees us coming, I want her to know why we’re here. No pretenses.”

Sam nods. “Okay,” he agrees. “No pretenses.”

The three of them open their doors and step into the cool afternoon air. A light breeze carries a flurry of leaves and litter around their feet. It’s definitely on the earlier side of the day to be walking into a bar, which plays into their favor. Fewer witnesses will mean fewer problems down the line. There’s only one other vehicle in the lot—an old, hulking tub of a Skylark, and one that has certainly seen better days at that. Good. That’s very good.

They walk across the pavement and enter the bar one by one. The smell of stale beer and bad decisions hits them with a vengeance as soon as they’re inside. There are only two people here this time of day—a balding, forty-something bartender (Eddie, most likely), and Miss Lonely Hearts 1972, an aging, bottle-blonde slumped over a Singapore Sling at the corner of the bar (presumably the owner of the Skylark). It’s a depressing scene, but none of them were really expecting it to be much different.

“Help you gentlemen?” the bartender asks, grabbing a rag from a pile behind him and starting to wipe down the bar top in slow, steady circles.

Sam speaks fist. “Yeah,” he says, stepping forward to grab a seat in front of probably-Eddie. “We’re looking for someone.”

Probably-Eddie looks around and chuckles. “Y’all might’ve come at the wrong time for that.”

“ _Information_ about someone,” Dean steps in, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small wad of cash. “Happy to make it worth your while.”

Probably-Eddie shakes his head. “Come on, fellas. This isn’t that kind of joint.”

Finally, Cas steps up to the bar and locks eyes with Probably-Eddie. His rag-circles slow, and he seems almost enraptured by whatever he sees in Cas’ face. “We’re looking for a woman whom we’ve heard drinks here. Someone who might have information about a sick friend of ours. In fact, she might be the only one who can help her. Please. We’re not looking to cause any trouble, we just need to know where to find her.”

It takes Probably-Eddie a second or two to make his decision, but he finally nods. “All right. I’m not in the business of handing out people’s personal information, but if I can help y’all and your friend, I’ll do my best.”

Dean leans forward on the bar, hands on his elbows. “Her name’s Juliet. Brunette, therapist, comes in about three times a week, from what we understand.”

It’s all Dean has to say. Probably-Eddie is nodding again, and tosses his rag back into the pile. “Of course. Juliet’s one of my best customers lately. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Helps out a lot of folks around here, even though she’s only been in town a couple of months. Well-liked.” He grabs a piece of paper from behind his register and scribbles down an address. “If anyone can help your friend, I’d say it’s her.” He passes the paper to Dean, who almost can’t believe their luck at how easy this all has been. “Far as I know, this is her place. She’s let a couple of regulars crash there when they’ve been too drunk to drive, and we send a cab over in the morning to bring them back.”

“She sounds like a real mensch,” Dean mutters. His sarcasm is lost on Probably-Eddie, probably for the best.

“She is.” Probably-Eddie pulls back, obviously ending the conversation. “Good luck, boys. I hope you’re able to find what you need.”

Address in hand, the three caballeros head back outside. They climb back into the Impala, back into their earlier silence, and sit in contemplation.

Again, Sam’s the first to speak. “That was weird, right?”

Cas nods. “Definitely unexpected.”

“Maybe Juliet’s put the whammy on him too,” Dean offers.

“Or,” Sam starts, “maybe she’s just genuinely that nice.”

“You’re defending the witch who’s turned our friend into a hotter version of Nosferatu?” Dean snarks. “Nice, Sam.”

“I’m not defending anyone,” Sam retorts, “Except maybe she’s telling the truth when she says she trusted Juliet enough to think the spell was a good idea.”

Dean slides his key into the ignition and starts the car. The engine roars comfortingly to life. “Yeah, maybe,” he mumbles, shifting into drive and pulling out onto the road. He passes the paper to Sam. “GPS us there, would you?”

Sam obliges, and for the next ten minutes, the only sound in the car is the tiny voice of Google maps directing them straight to the witch. By the time they pull up to the small Craftsman cottage, the anticipation has built up enough in all of them to be palpable.

“Let’s do this,” Dean says, kicking open his door before the engine has even died. Sam and Cas exchange a nervous glance before doing the same. This has so much potential to go so wrong, but they really have been left with no other choice.

Dean and Sam stride up to the front door in tandem, Cas trailing slightly behind. They keep their guns hidden, but ready to draw at a moment’s notice. This is business, plain and simple. No pretense, right?

The reach the front door and Sam raises his hand to knock. To his surprise, Dean simply lifts his leg and kicks the door in. It hits the wall so hard it leaves a hole in its wake. A woman screams in the living room, and Team Free Will moves in for the proverbial kill.

When they find Juliet, she’s cowering behind the couch, hiding her face. “Whoever you are, take what you want, please,” her hands are up in a defensive position. She hasn’t so much as looked at her attackers. “Just don’t hurt me.”

She’s prettier than any of them had expected. Her dark brown hair spills gently over her shoulders, which are covered by a smart, professional, green blouse that complements her coloring perfectly. They can see why you would have been drawn to her in the first place; she’s absolutely beautiful. No surprise there—good witchcraft can be better than plastic surgery in a lot of cases.

Team Free Will stands their ground on the other side of Juliet’s sofa, waiting for her to stop cowering. Nobody speaks. They hardly breathe. They just stare at her and take in the sight of her perfectly normal living room, in her perfectly normal house. Nothing about her or her living situation suggests she could or SHOULD have the power to rip away people’s souls, and yet… here they all were.

“Stop whimpering,” Dean finally scolds when he’s had enough.

Juliet slowly unfolds herself and tries her best to stand upright. “I’m sorry, I just—” she slowly raises her head to face the three men, and her face immediately loses all of its color. “Oh, shit.”

“‘Oh shit’ is right, lady,” Dean says, taking a step forward. Juliet moves away quickly, tripping over her own coffee table and tumbling to the floor. Sam and Cas stand their ground, allowing him to take point on this. They both scope out the nearest exits, ready to move in case she makes a run for it.

Juliet scrambles backward, backing up until she’s pressed herself up against her fireplace. “What do you want?”

“You know who we are?” Sam asks, his voice cold as he stares down at her.

“You’re the Winchesters,” she manages. “You’re here about your friend.”

“What about our friend?” Dean demands, moving forward again. She flinches, having nowhere else to go. It brings a smile to his face. “I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you tell us what you did to her.”

Juliet looks confused. Her pretty face twists into a question mark. “What I did to her? I don’t understand, I—”

“Cut the crap,” Sam demands. She practically yips in fear.

Dean stalks over to her and kneels inches away from where she’s drawn herself practically into a ball. “Give us her soul back.”

“Her soul?” She repeats, taking her time to stare at each one of them. “How stupid do you think I am?” She asks without a trace of anger in her voice. “You think I bottled it up and put it in the fridge to give the _Winchesters_ an excuse to come after me?” Dean and Sam exchange a glance.

It’s Cas who speaks next. “If you don’t have it, who does?”

Juliet is slowly coming back to her senses. She backs away from Dean enough to push herself to her feet, slowly dusting herself off as she tries to explain. “Your friend wanted to be free, so I freed her. I released her soul into the ether. That’s the entire nature of this spell.” She can tell they don’t understand what, exactly, she’s saying. “Normally, if you remove a soul without catching it in some kind of vessel, it just reverts back to the owner. This magic cuts those ties. The soul is free to do what it wants, where it wants. It’s bound to nothing and to no one, and certainly not to me.”

It takes a second for Dean to take this all in. He looks away, contemplating what Juliet has just said, and then turns his gaze back on her. It’s hot enough burn. “If that’s the case, tell me why I shouldn’t just kill you here and now?”

Juliet tries to back away again, but she really has nowhere to go. “No, no, you can’t do that.”

Dean reaches to his gun where it rests in his waistband. “Give me one good reason.”

Her arms are back in front of her again as she pleads. “Removing a soul when someone’s in the state she’s in is dangerous,” she practically shrieks.

“Gee, you think?”

She manages to duck away from the fireplace and start edging her way towards the doorway that leads from her living room into her dining room. As she moves back, the three men follow and mirror her. She’s terrified, her breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts. “I mean, you can’t do something like that and then leave the patient unguided. Why do you think I didn’t pack up and leave town the second I did the spell?” She’s on the other side of the couch now, placing the sofa, the coffee table, and two end tables between herself and Team Free Will. It should be enough to make her feel safe, but it doesn’t do a damn thing. “You think I enjoy having my life threatened by gun-wielding maniacs? She isn’t supposed to stop seeing me. The practice is: I remove their souls, then continue sessions with them to help them manage their new… headspace.”

“You remove their souls and reprogram them, you mean,” Sam corrects her, his voice bitter.

“In a manner of speaking, yes, but it’s not the way you make it sound.” The way she’s pleading with them to believe her turns all of their stomachs. She’s desperate, frantic, and it’s doing her no favors. “There’s nothing nefarious about it,” she practically begs. “I am helping people.”

Dean is blown away by her audacity. “You think you’ve _helped her?_ ”

“I didn’t do anything she didn’t ask me to do. I’m not the bad guy here!” Her voice is high, verging on hysterical.

“You didn’t tell her you were removing her soul!” Dean shouts, and the sound makes her cringe.

“I offered her an end to her pain and suffering at any cost,” she blubbers, “and she accepted the consequences.” Juliet has finally stopped moving. She knows how futile it is at this point. Running will get her killed. Her only chance at this point is to reason with the men in front of her.

“You **lied** to her,” Cas accuses.

“I only lied by omission,” she answers, the explanation sounding flimsy even to herself. “And with EVERY intention of continuing therapy to help her control herself. I delivered exactly what I promised.”

That’s right, she thinks. She did everything she told you she would do. She held up her end of the bargain, god damn it, and you hadn’t held up yours. The only thing she’d asked for, the only thing she’d begged of you, was that you wouldn’t send anyone after her, and yet here she was, being accosted in her own living room by three of your goons over your inability to understand how the deal was meant to work.

The thought gives her back some confidence. She rolls back her shoulders and stands firm and defiant in. “I will not be held responsible for a case of buyer’s remorse,” she warns, taking the time to look all three of them directly in the eye. Then it dawns on her. “But that’s not what this is, is it? Or she’d be here herself. She doesn’t regret any of this. You do.”

It all falls into place, and Juliet realizes now she’s in more danger than she initially thought.

“You don’t know what it’s done to her,” Dean snarls, crossing the distance between them with intense speed.

Juliet shakes her head. “It’s too early for it to have done much. We still have time—”

Dean surprises everyone by hitting her directly in the face.

Sam cries out in surprise. “Dean, hold the hell on, man!”

“I’m done with this justification crap.” He grabs Juliet by the shoulders and practically lifts her off the ground. She cries out, tears starting to gather at the corners of her eyes. “You’ve ruined her, do you understand that? It took less than a day for her to turn into some _thing_ I can’t even recognize.”

“No,” Juliet protests weakly, wincing with pain. “It couldn’t have happened that fast.”

“Do you have any idea how far gone she was before you did this to her?”

“I knew she was in trouble—”

“Do you know how far?” Dean repeats, screaming the question into Juliet’s face.

Her face falls. She becomes sullen and resigned, finally seeming to understand how badly she’s screwed up and the futility of fighting back. Finally understanding that she’s finished. “What’s done is done,” she mumbles, the fight completely out of her, “and unless she comes back to the shop with a receipt, there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”

“A receipt?” There’s both hope and confusion in Sam’s voice as he poses the question.

“She has to want her soul back in order for me to find it again,” Juliet murmurs as tears begin to slide down her cheeks. “The magic it would take to track it down without her permission is way, way beyond my pay grade.”

Dean tightens his grip on her. “You’re going to figure it out, sweetheart.”

“You’re not listening to me!” She cries desperately, wrenching herself out of Dean’s grasp. “This is not a question of wanting or not wanting to help, this is simply outside the realm of possibility for me. I am telling you, I am not capable of doing this without her help. Another witch, another monster, maybe—”

She’s cut off when a bullet hole appears between her eyes and she slumps to the floor, dead.

Sam and Cas both stare at Dean in shock as he holsters the gun they didn’t even see him draw, steps over the body, and walks towards the door.

“We’re done here,” he says.

“Dean, what the hell did you just do?” Sam gapes at him, aghast.

“What I had to.” He continues walking. Sam and Cas struggle to keep up. “You heard what she said—she can’t help us.”

“She said she could have helped keep it in check—” Cas starts, but Dean cuts him off almost as quickly as he starts.

“You believe that?” He stops dead in his tracks and turns to stare down the other two. “She would have said anything just now to stop us from hurting her. She didn’t know what she was doing. And you heard her—she’s done this before. If I hadn’t stopped her, she would have done it again. She was messing with powers she doesn’t understand." A pause. " _Didn't_ understand," he revises.

“We don’t understand them any better, Dean,” Sam says quietly, his voice resigned. “She was the closest thing she had to a lead.”

Dean shakes his head and starts walking again. “Then we find another lead.”

He doesn’t even bother closing Juliet’s front door as he exits. He’s back in the Impala with his seatbelt on before the other two have even crossed the threshold. They’re barely in their seats by the time he’s peeling away from the curb.

“Where are we going?” Sam’s almost too nervous to ask the question.

“Back to the bunker. We need to make sure Jack is safe, and then we need to find some real answers.”

Cas speaks in a tone barely above a whisper. “What about the body?”

Dean is ice cold. “Let someone else deal with it for once.” He presses his foot down on the accelerator and the engine screams as they take off down the road.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the bunker, you manage to get some one-on-one time with Jack

Back in the bunker, Jack is sitting in his room trying everything in his power to keep himself occupied while the rest of the guys track down Juliet. He’s tried listening to some of Dean’s music (he liked Black Sabbath, but wasn’t as sure about Metallica), then some of Sam’s (Mumford and Sons had a pretty nice sound), but the music gave his mind too much leeway to wander. After music, he’d moved on to reading books, but most of what he’d gotten his hands on had been far too esoteric for him to understand much, which presented the same issues that listening to music had. He’s now on his third attempt at distraction: cartoons. He’s borrowed Dean’s laptop and is currently trying to watch something called “Adventure Time,” which he isn’t quite sure if he finds funny or not yet. If the cartoons don’t pan out, he’s not sure what to try next, and that puts him extremely on edge.

What makes it all more difficult, of course, is the fact that you have been singing (or screaming, more realistically) at the top of your lungs for at least an hour now, doing your best to get and keep Jack’s attention as you sit alone in the cold, uncomfortable darkness of the dungeon.

Jack turns up the volume on the laptop as far as it will go, but the speakers aren’t very good, and he doesn’t have headphones. You’re on your sixth Zeppelin song of the night, and you’re actually doing it justice, if you do say so yourself. Jack might not agree, but you won’t actually know until someone comes down the hallway and tells you to shut up.

Your voice carries down the corridor and over the Bacon Pancakes song Jack is doing his best to focus on:

“Mine’s a tale that can’t be told,” you holler, your voice pretty on-pitch considering your volume, “my freedom I hold dear  
How years ago in days of old, when magic filled the air  
‘Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair…”

You’ve almost pushed Jack right over the edge, but he’s determined not to let it get to him.

That is, until the next line, when you kick it up a notch and push your voice to its absolute limit:

“But Gollum, and the evil one  
Crept up and slipped away with her…  
HER  
HER  
HER!”

Slamming the laptop closed, Jack finally realizes he’s got no choice. You’re going to keep going either until he’s driven completely insane, or until he goes in and talks to you. The thought makes him incredibly nervous, but he reminds himself that Castiel tied you up himself. There’s no way for you to escape. He’ll be safe as long as he stays far enough away from you that you can’t grab onto anything of his, and as long as he reminds himself that everything you say is either a half-truth or an outright lie.

Besides, he thinks to himself, maybe talking to him will do you some good. He’s incredibly powerful, and he still doesn’t know the full extent of his talents yet. Maybe he’s even got some kind of ability to make you better. Barring that, at least he might be able to keep you from getting worse.

He opens the door and steps out into the hallway, amazed at how much louder your voice is from out here. It doesn’t take him long to make his way to the dungeon. He takes a moment to collect himself before opening the door and stepping inside.

You’re in the chair where Cas left you, your head tilted back as you scream-sing your way through Zeppelin’s greatest hits. You hear the door open and snap your head back up, the singing stopping all at once. The silence that follows is equal parts jarring and eerie.

You and Jack make eye contact and simply stare at each other for a few moments as you puzzle out exactly what’s going on. Why is Jack the one who’s here? There’s no way in hell that Sam, Dean, or Cas would let him wander in by himself if they were around, which must mean they’ve gone out and left poor little Jack behind for some reason or another.

You smile. So you get Jack alone? This could work out very well for you.

“Guess they left you in charge of me, huh?” you say, Cheshire grin stretched across your face.

Jack shrugs, hovering by the door. “I guess so.”

“Probably didn’t want you screwing up whatever mission they’re on,” you waste no time unleashing your animosity on him, “but it looked better on paper to say your job was to make sure I’m okay.”

Jack smiles. That throws you pretty far off your game for a solid minute. “I know I can’t help them with this,” he admits, his voice sounding altogether chipper. “I could end up being more of a problem for them when they find your witch friend.”

You find your footing again and manage half-smile in spite of your confusion. “Well, the first step is admitting it.”

You’re both quiet again, staring at each other across the empty room. Jack takes a few steps closer to you, studying your eyes. You don’t like it. You much prefer pissing off the Winchesters to whatever the hell it is Jack is trying to do with you now that he’s been left to his own devices.

“How are you?” he finally asks. He’s sincere, you realize. He genuinely wants to know. It’s so sweet, so simple of him, you can’t help but laugh.

“I am doing just fine, kiddo,” and you mean it. “I just wish you and the rest of them could understand that and give up this idiotic goose chase.”

Jack shakes his head, still making his way closer to you. “They say you’re not going to be fine. They say you’re going to get worse, and eventually you’re going to hurt people. Eventually you might hurt us.”

“Well, you’re not exactly ‘people,’ are ya, sweetheart?” You say, waiting for your words to hit their mark. When he doesn’t respond, you press on. “Do you know why I don’t want my soul back? The real reason? Because I’m finally free of all the things that were holding me back. I don’t have to be sad or angry or scared anymore, Jack. It’s got nothing to do with being capable of hurting people. I never have to be scared of anything ever again.”

You’ve finally said something that’s thrown him. Thank the gods, you think. Jack stops and blinks at you, trying to wrap his head around your words. “You were scared?”

“Oh man, slugger,” you don’t even know what to make of that. He’s really got himself convinced that none of you are afraid of anything, it seems. “Your naïveté would break my god damn heart if my heart could still break. We are all scared, all the time, and all of us here are just walking around lying to ourselves and each other about it.”

Jack’s confusion just gets worse. “But... lying is wrong.”

“Yes, it is,” you say slowly, your tone equal parts saccharine and patronizing. “Boy, I’m glad you get that." You exhale loudly, deliberately, and decide to try a new tactic. "So this is me: not lying, telling you the Chuck’s honest.” You take a moment to catch his gaze, and, once you have it, you hold it. “They lie to protect you. They don’t want you to know how messed up they all are because they want you to feel like you’ve got a fighting chance in this world. Which you don’t, of course,” you add casually. “But they don’t lie to you to hurt you, Jack.” The last part, at least, is sincere.

“But they’re still lying,” Jack says, still trying to puzzle out what you’re telling him. It seems he’s forgotten the fact that he is not supposed to be listening to a word you say.

“Yeah,” you nod, scrunching up your nose, “they are.”

“And you’re not?” He asks dubiously.

You shake your head. “Not anymore, Jack. I won’t ever lie to you again. Not as long as I’m like this.” You’re still holding his eyes, but he finally averts his gaze. You can feel him slipping away from you. You may have overplayed your hand here. Damn.

“You’re trying to get me to agree to stop them.” He says, half in accusation, half in shame for having listened to you in the first place.

You grin again, dropping the act. “Can’t get anything past you, can I sweetheart?” Well, if you can’t win him over with kindness, you can at least knock him down a few pegs. “You want to know what I was the most afraid of?” You ask, knowing the admission will intrigue him. You're right. He's right back to eating out of your hand. “Trying to be a mother to you.”

“And now that doesn’t scare you anymore?” He almost sounds hopeful that it's true. It also sounds like he doesn't believe you, and that he's not sure what he should believe anymore. In fact, it sounds like you've got him exactly where you want him.

You shake your head. “No,” you answer simply, preparing to deliver your crushing blows. “Because now I know I don’t need to be your mom. There’s no reason for me to feel maternal towards you,” you continue, sounding as nonchalant as you’ve ever sounded. You’re watching Jack out of the corner of your eye, doing your best to avoid looking directly at him. This will land better the more disinterested you seem, and gosh, you really want it to land. “You _had_ a mom, and now she’s dead. You’re not my son. I don’t need to treat you like one.

“I certainly don’t need to love you like one,” you finish.

When Jack finally answers, his voice is remarkably calm. “You’re saying this to hurt me,” he announces, almost sounding relieved at the idea.

“I’m saying this to help you,” you correct him. “The sooner you realize the way things really are, the sooner you’ll find your place in this world.”

To your surprise, Jack finally closes the distance between you and stands inches away from your seat, towering over your restrained form. “I know my place in this world. It’s with my family. Our family. You used to know that.”

“We’re not a family, Jack,” you say, squirming in an attempt to lean closer to him. Cas really didn’t leave you much wiggle room, very literally speaking. “We’re a bunch of _things_ tied together by circumstance and a common purpose, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is believing in something that isn’t worth believing in. THAT is going to get us hurt and killed. When has believing we’re a family ever made things better for us?” You ask with a pointed stare.

“It makes things better,” he answers defiantly. “I know it. And I know you can’t see that right now. We’re going to fix you. We’re going to get your soul back.”

“And why would you want to do that? To get your new mommy back?” The fact that you don’t seem to be getting under his skin is really starting to piss you off. You’re bored, tied in an uncomfortable position to an uncomfortable chair, and you can’t even get Satan’s kid a _little_ riled up for the hell of it? “Forget it, Jack. I was a piss-poor parental figure even before Juliet fixed me. You’re better off without me. Hell, you’re probably better off without any of us, but I doubt anything I say at this point is going to change your mind.”

You sigh, ready to give up on upsetting him. The unfortunate thing, you realize, is that everything you’re saying is true. Sure, you’re just needling him for the fuck of it, but you’re also right. You’re not a family, and Jack probably would be better off without you. Hell, you’re all so god damn codependent that every single one of you would be better off on your own. You might not have a soul, but that doesn’t necessarily make you evil. It just makes things clearer.

You sigh a second time, and drop your head. “Just… try to remember what I’m saying, okay? If you want some motherly advice, that’s what I’ve got for you.” You’re truly sincere this time, and Jack seems to sense it. He’s about to respond when you’re interrupted by the sound of the bunker door slamming shut upstairs.

“They’re back,” Jack says. He shoots you a pitying glance, and then turns to walk out and leave you alone again with your thoughts.

“Hey Jack!” He pauses just long enough to let you finish. “Just because I’m soulless doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

You get the feeling he’s about to say something in response, but all you get instead is the sound of the closing door and the ensuing darkness.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang's desperate to find Plan B following Juliet's murder, and ends up reaching out to an old "friend" for help.

“Jack?” Cas calls out as soon as the three of them enter the bunker.

They trudge down the staircase in various stages of defeat, the severity of Dean murdering Juliet hitting home for all of them.

As soon as he reaches the library, Sam pulls out a chair and slumps down into it, resting his head on his forearms on the table and trying his best to control his spiraling thoughts. Cas follows him into the room, but doesn’t stop. He paces back and forth, keeping an eye on the interior door for any sign of Jack as he does. Dean, naturally, makes a beeline for the whiskey set sitting near the closest bookshelf. He takes both glasses from the tray and fills them almost to the top with alcohol, then downs them both himself. Cas watches him in dismay. Sam, meanwhile, still has his head down and misses this charming development. As Cas is about to say something, Jack finally bursts into the room, looking panicked and slightly out of breath.

“What happened to you?” Dean asks, giving him the once-over.

Jack shakes his head. “Nothing,” he lies, feeling terrible the second the falsehood passes his lips. If they’re allowed to lie to protect him, then he’s allowed to lie to protect them, he’s decided after his conversation with you. And it’s a conversation they never have to know about, as far as he’s concerned.

Cas, however, sees right through him. He approaches the kid and puts a hand on his shoulder, turning Jack to face him. Jack quickly averts his eyes, and Cas immediately knows what’s gone on.

"You spoke to her, didn’t you?” Cas asks. Dean and Sam are on their feet and flanking Cas in a second.

“Wait, you went in there with her?” Sam asks, somewhere between incredulous and concerned.

“Alone?” Dean demands, much angrier than his brother is.

Jack looks down at his feet sheepishly. “Yes. She was screaming—”

“Was she okay?” Sam interrupts.

Jack nods quickly. “She was fine. She wasn’t screaming in pain. She was screaming songs, trying to get my attention, I think. She wanted me to come in and talk to her.” He’s starting to feel claustrophobic with the three men crowding him the way they are. He takes a step back and puts his hands up as a means of asking them to back off. Dean is the only one who looks like he isn’t going to comply, but Sam holds him back.

“I thought maybe I could help her,” Jack continues, lost in his own rationalization. “I don’t even know the full extent of my powers, so I wondered if maybe one of them couldn’t… fix her somehow.”

Cas stares at him, heartbroken. He wants so badly to protect him from this kind of failure, it actually aches. “Jack, it isn’t your job to try and fix her.”

“I know that,” Jack retorts. He knows he’s essentially a child, but he wishes they would stop treating him like one in everything he does. “But it _is_ OUR job. Together.” All three of them are quiet at that. They really can’t argue his point. “And I am a part of this, so I wanted to do what I could to help.”

“What did you do?” Dean asks, a little more accusatory than he means to make it. Either Jack doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t mind.

“I talked to her. That’s all. I just… asked her how she was doing.” He’s been doing a great job sounding sure of himself and making eye contact, but at this point, his gaze drifts downward again. “I shouldn’t have listened to her,” he says after a very long pause, “I know that. But what she was saying made sense, until…” he drifts off, and can’t bring himself to finish the thought.

Cas places a hand on Jack’s shoulder and squeezes it gently. Jack slowly meets his eyes, and Cas sees the tears gathered there. “What did she say to you?” he asks softly.

“That my mother is dead, and that she is not my new mother. That it isn’t her job to love me like a mother.” All three men are struck dumb by the callousness of your words. They have no idea how to respond, and the fact that Jack keeps adding to it only makes it worse. “She said we aren’t a family, not really. We’re a group of things brought together by circumstance.” They all avert their gaze at that one. It’s hitting far too close to home for them to risk looking at one another right now. “She said believing that we are a family is what’s going to get us killed.”

The silence that fills the room is thick enough to cut through with a knife. It’s a thought they’ve all had multiple times before—the thought that believing in their little group is what’s eventually going to get them killed. It’s something their enemies had trotted out in front of them time and time again, and even proven right in some cases. But hearing it come from one of their own, especially said without malice or anger, makes it worse somehow. Makes it different, and somehow more real.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says at last, when it’s clear nobody else is going to speak. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No,” Dean surprises everyone by pulling Jack into a deep embrace. Jack rests his head on Dean’s shoulder and leaves it there for a moment. “You did nothing wrong. The only one wrong in all of this is her, and as soon as we can, we’re gonna get her straight.”

Jack pulls back, staring hopefully into Dean’s face. “Did you find the witch?”

Dean’s already drawn face falls.

“We did,” Sam mutters, “but she’s not going to be much help to us now.”

“Dean killed her,” Cas adds bitterly.

“She couldn’t have helped us anyway,” Dean defends himself, crossing back to the whiskey. “She said it herself—the kid had to want her soul back for her to be able to find it.” He pours himself another drink and downs it.

“She was still the only connection we had to that kind of magic without making a demon deal, Dean,” Sam growls, trying his best to keep his composure as his brother starts to drink his away.

Cas leans forward onto the table Sam is sitting at and drums his fingers on the tabletop. He thinks long and hard about what Sam’s just said, then finally announces, “That’s not entirely true.” The rest of the group stops to look at him. “We have Rowena.”

“‘Have’ and ‘Rowena’ are not two words we should ever be using together in a sentence,” Dean all but spits back at Cas.

“She does owe us one after we gave her the page from the Black Grimoire,” Sam offers.

Dean’s not having it. “After YOU gave her the page, you mean.”

Cas stands up straight and squares his shoulders. “What is the harm of at least reaching out to her, Dean?” he demands, well past the point of wanting to deal with Dean’s defeatist attitude especially after HE was the one who murdered the only other lead they had in the case without so much as blinking.

Dean just laughs bitterly and pours himself a fourth whiskey. “You want to reach out to her?” he chuckles. “Fine by me. Just don’t come crying to me when she turns you down unless you want a really big ‘I TOLD YOU SO.’”

Sam’s had enough. He slams his hands down on the table and throws himself to his feet. “Dean, enough! We’d at least have somewhere to turn if you hadn’t shot Juliet in the god damn head before we got anything else out of her, so why don’t you try helping the rest of us instead of sitting over there and getting hammered for a change?”

Dean’s stunned into silence. He doesn’t put the whiskey down, but he doesn’t drink it either. He crosses his arms over his chest and nods at Sam. “Fine. I’ll help. Call Rowena. Put her on speaker. I’ll ask her myself if she answers.”

Sam doesn’t answer. He just takes his phone out of his jacket pocket and scrolls through the contacts list until he comes across Rowena’s number. He hits “SEND” and switches it to speaker while it connects. He sets the phone down in the center of the table, and all four men draw closer to it as they listen to it ring. Once. Twice. Three times.

“See,” Dean grumbles, “exactly like I—”

“Hello Samuel,” he’s cut off by the chipper sound of Rowena’s brogue. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sam smirks sarcastically at his brother and gives him a gesture to suggest, “ALL YOURS.” Dean nods in response, sets the whiskey aside, and leans forward.

“Rowena, it’s Dean.”

“Of course it is,” she sighs, sounding disappointed.

“We have a problem.”

Rowena laughs on the other end. “I figured. You boys sure do have a way of getting into tight spots when I’m not around, don’t you? Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what sort of trouble you’ve gotten yourselves into and I’ll tell you what, if anything, I can do to help.”

They all take a moment to look at each other soberly before Dean starts by mentioning your name.

“What about her?” Rowena asks, growing impatient.

Cas is the one who answers. “She’s had her soul removed by a witch.”

Rowena falls silent. Just as Dean is about to check to see if they’ve lost the connection, she speaks again. “How far are you lot from Lincoln, Nebraska?” she asks at last.

Dean and Sam exchange a look. “About three hours,” Sam says. “Why?”

“This isn’t the sort of conversation we should be having over the phone. Meet me here, we’ll finish this in person,” she orders.

“We can’t just pick up and drive to Nebraska,” Dean scoffs. “She’s in no condition to go anywhere unless she's wearing at least six pairs of handcuffs, and we can’t leave her here alone.”

“Then leave her there with one of you, and the rest of you lot come talk to me. There is a lot potentially at play here,” her voice is commanding and unpleasant, but it sounds like she could know what she’s talking about. “If it’s something I can help you with, I’ll bring what I have and follow you back to Lebanon.”

“And what if it’s not something you can help with?” Sam asks, afraid of the answer.

“You can burn that bridge when you cross it.” She hangs up. A few moments later, a text message with her address flashes across the screen.

Sam sighs. “So which one of us stays here with her?” He asks.

Dean throws his head back with an eye roll. “We’re not seriously doing this, are we? Driving all the way to Nebraska just to find out if there’s even a possibility Rowena can help us? We don’t have time to play her games.”

“We don’t have time not to, Dean!” Sam counters, staring at his brother incredulously. “If you don’t want to go, then Cas, Jack, and I will drive there tonight, but I’m not going to ignore the very real possibility that Rowena might be the solution to this problem.”

Cas nods. “I agree. I think anything is worth trying at this point, just to save ourselves the trouble of trying to make deals with demons or demigods to get her soul back.”

“I think we should try it,” Jack offers meekly, though he knows at this point he’s mostly just providing color commentary until they figure this all out.

Dean places his hands on the table and leans forward, dropping his head to his chest and taking long, slow breath. “Fine. We will go to Rowena’s and see what she has to offer. But I am not staying here with her,” he points in the general direction of the dungeon, where you’ve now apparently taken to scream-singing Sabbath songs. Cas and Sam both look at him, puzzled.

“I can’t, man,” he admits, his voice low like the act of admission hurts him. “Not after what she tried to pull this morning. I don’t want to hear what else she has to say to me. I don’t need that in my head right now.” Sam casts a quick glance at the undrunk whiskey, wondering if maybe the first three have a role to play in Dean’s sudden honesty.

Cas, too, shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be left with her either,” he says. He’s imagining how hard he threw you into that wall, and it takes all of his strength not to shudder at the memory. “I don’t trust myself not to… do her harm… if she pushes me.”

True confession time is doing a serious number on Sam. He’s panicked, trying to come up with a reason why he can’t be left alone with you, but one look at Jack and the sadness in his eyes tells him he really doesn’t have a choice. “I guess it’s got to be me,” he finally sighs. “We can’t leave you with her again, Jack. And I guess I know exactly what she’s going to come at me with if she’s going to try and mess with my head,” he mumbles, watching Dean deliberately flick his eyes away from him so as not to meet his. Cas and Jack just look confused, but he doesn’t need to fill them in on that particular set of details just now. “So at least I can be prepared for that,” he finishes.

Dean nods. Cas nods. Jack does nothing.

“All right,” Dean says. “So Sammy stays here with the Incredible Soulless Girl and the rest of us hit the road.” He pulls his keys out of his pocket and starts heading back toward the main entrance of the bunker.

“Let’s go,” he calls back to Cas and Jack. “Sooner we hit pavement, the sooner we can get this all over with.”

Sam watches from below as the three of them climb the stairs and head out the door. Just when he thinks he’s alone, Dean pops his head back in for a quick second.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Try not to bang her this time.”

The door slams shut.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas, Dean, and Jack arrive in Lincon to talk to Rowena.

The drive to Lincoln, if it’s possible, is even more awkward than the ride to Eddie’s. For three hours, hardly a word passes between Dean, Cas, and Jack. The majority of the sound in the car comes from the GPS, and even that manages to sound strained. When they finally pull up in front of the address Rowena texted over, they exhale a collective sigh of relief.

“All right,” Dean says, possibly the first words he’s spoken since they crossed the border into Nebraska, “let’s make this fast.” He opens the door and steps into the crisp, clean air.

Jack undoes his seatbelt and reaches for the door when Cas stops him from the front seat. “Jack,” he begins gently, “I think you’d better wait here.”

Jack blinks at him in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why did you bring me all this way if you want me to stay in the car?”

Dean watches silently from outside, perfectly content not to interfere with Cas’ “parenting.”

“Would you like me to be honest?” Cas asks, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” Jack says with a trace of resentment in his voice.

“The reason I wanted you here with us was to keep you safe from her,” he answers, obviously referring to you. “But I’m not entirely sure you’re safe with Rowena either.”

“I thought we were here because she’s going to help us.” None of this makes any sense to Jack. It’s been hard enough already navigating Castiel’s and the Winchester’s bizarre ideas of safety and righteousness without adding this soulless version of you into the mix. What _should_ be safe isn’t, and apparently the only way to make anything safe is to first do something horribly dangerous and morally ambiguous to pave the way for security. Security, which Jack has come to realize, which is only ever temporary at best. No, he doesn’t understand any of it, and it only seems to be getting worse.

“She is,” Cas replies, sounding exasperated, “but Rowena’s version of ‘help’ isn’t always as straightforward as one would like.”

“When is anything ever as straightforward as one would like?” Jack mutters under his breath, rebuckling his seatbelt and sinking back into his seat. He folds his arms over his chest and lowers his head, refusing to make eye contact with Cas.

Cas pauses for a moment. “Thank you for understanding,” he says, clearly missing every social cue Jack is giving off.

Dean rolls his eyes, but says nothing. Soon, he and Cas are both standing outside, readying themselves for what is sure to be yet another fun afternoon with Rowena Macleod. They stride side-by-side up the front walk of the modest, unassuming house, both on guard with each step they take. They reach the front door and glance at each other, the same question in both their eyes: What, exactly, are we walking into?

The front door opens just as Dean raises his hand to knock.

Rowena, looking put-together and elegant as always, stands in front of them in a long, purple dress that does absolutely everything to complement her hair and skin tone. Dean and Cas are both almost taken aback by how good she looks, and it shows. She smiles at their reactions to her; it always thrills her when her efforts don’t go unnoticed, even if it is by the Winchesters and their pet angel.

“Always lovely to see you boys,” she purrs, stepping aside and motioning for them to come in. Dean enters first, glancing around the entryway and living room casually, inadvertently looking for any obvious traps or signs of danger. Cas follows and does the same, unconsciously mirroring Dean. Rowena notices and smiles to herself, closing the door quietly behind her.

“You live here now?” Dean asks, walking to the chesterfield sofa in the middle of the living room and standing beside it. Cas, for his part, hovers near the door, content not to venture much farther into Rowena’s home if he can help it.

Rowena shrugs and strides to the other side of the chesterfield, settling herself on it in such a way to suggest she’s draping herself across it rather than simply sitting down. A remarkable flair for the dramatic, Castiel thinks sarcastically. “This is where I’m living at the moment. I don’t expect it to last long. They never do,” she says wistfully, with a casual flick of her wrist.

“I don’t even want to know,” Dean says, hitching up his jeans and plopping down on the sofa next to Rowena as ungracefully as she’s ever seen a man sit.

“No,” she agrees, “you don’t.” She glances over her shoulder at Cas. “I’d offer you a seat and a cup of tea, but I think we’ve already wasted enough time with pleasantries. Tell me what’s wrong with your girl, and I’ll tell you what our options are.”

It surprises Cas to hear her say “our” options. It surprises him even more that it endears her to him.

Dean takes the opportunity to collapse a little as he tells her the story. She watches him with an unexpected heaviness in her heart as he tells her everything about the last couple of months, the highlights of which she already knows. Her eyes flicker to Castiel every now again, who is watching Dean speak, entirely enrapt. It’s clear he’s never heard the entire story from start to finish like this before either, and it’s not a pleasant tale. Dean’s voice cracks a few times, and both Rowena and Cas react to it in spite of themselves. Cas finds himself very grateful he’s asked Jack to wait in the car after hearing it all laid out in such spectacularly awful fashion.

When Dean gets to the part about Toledo, Rowena actually feels something inside her break. She’s always been fond of you in her own way; something about you has always reminded her of herself at your age. Even when she was trying to kill you, it was always with a modicum of respect. Hearing about you having the hell beaten out of you by a man you trusted with your body, a man you lowered yourself to go home with in the first place because of how terrible you felt inside, hits Rowena too close to home. She feels the pinprick sensation of tears in her eyes and has to look away from both Cas and Dean so they can’t see her face when she starts to cry.

It’s also the first time Cas has heard the whole story, and he’s left gaping at Dean by the time the narrative finds itself back in Lebanon. Dean, for his part, has to take a break to collect himself after he tells them both how long it took the bruises on your cheekbones to heal.

The room is quiet for what feels like a very long time before Dean can start again.

“It just got worse after that,” he says.

“Of course it did,” Rowena sighs, covertly wiping the tears from her cheeks.

The rest of the story moves quickly, carrying them up to the point where this all got started: “So apparently she found herself a therapist sometime last month, only the therapist turned out to be—”

“—a witch,” Rowena finishes for him, pushing herself to a standing position. “And one who can remove human souls at that, under the guise of therapy.” She begins to pace, her face set with worry now that she knows your story. She comes to stop directly in front of Dean. “Exactly how bad off was she, mentally speaking, when the spell was performed?”

“The way she told it to Sam,” Dean is reluctant to say what comes next, but he knows he doesn’t have a choice, “she was considering suicide.”

“She was suicidal and someone _removed her soul_?” Rowena’s voice jumps to the highest end of its octave. Dean and Cas are both shocked by the ferocity of her reaction. “Do you have any idea what that does to a person in that condition? Take someone who is already prepared to be done with existence, and then remove the part of them that gives them a reason to keep hanging on: What does that look like? It takes a complete imbecile to believe it's some kind of bandaid that makes all of the bad shite disappear. It makes things worse. This only ends one of two ways: she either goes down fast and alone, or she decides to self-destruct and take out as many of the people around her with her when she goes.” She sighs deeply, the dark reality of the situation echoed in the sound. “It sounds like she’s chosen option 2. And when I say take as many of you out as she can as she goes, I am deadly serious about that, boys. She will do everything she can to destroy you, and then she will destroy herself.”

Dean lets the gravity of the situation sink in as he tries to figure out how to respond. “So how do we stop it?”

“We need get her soul back. Who’s got it?”

“That’s the problem—” Dean struggles to remember the wording Juliet used. “—the spell severed the ties—”

“Severed the ties between the soul and the host,” Rowena finishes, and sighs. “I know the spell. And I assume I know the witch who did this: does the name Juliet Desjardins mean anything to you?”

Dean nods. “’Juliet’ does, anyway.”

“And she refused to help you on this, I assume?”

“She did.”

Cas finally speaks up. “Dean killed her.” He expects Rowena to take umbrage to this, but is surprised when she simply shrugs and nods her approval.

“I’m not surprised. It’s about bloody time someone did.” Another pause, another sigh. “You should have come to me the day it happened. I assume she’s deteriorating quickly?”

“She’s currently handcuffed to a chair in our dungeon,” Dean snaps. “Does that answer your question?”

Rowena raises a perfectly manicured hand to her lips and bites down hard on her thumbnail. “Then we really don’t have much time. We can try and track it down, but…”

“But what?”

“It’s a bit of a—hm….what’s the phrase?—‘Needle in a haystack.’ Except instead of a haystack, it’s the entire universe, and in this case, I guarantee we’re not the only ones looking for the needle.”

Cas and Dean exchange glances. “What does that mean?”

“It means, boys, that anyone who’s got it in for the group of you is going to be out there trying to exact revenge by grabbing her soul and either doing something nasty to it or destroying it entirely. If word’s got out about this, and I’m worried it will as soon as things start finding out about Juliet’s untimely demise, then we have precious little time to save your friend.”

“Juliet said the magic it would take to find her soul if she didn’t want it back was powerful. Too powerful for her,” Dean admits.

“That’s because Juliet was an idiot novice,” Rowena chides. She makes her way to a large sideboard across the room from the sofa and opens the doors to reveal a series of bags and boxes which she starts pulling out. “She spent more time trying to help people than focus on her craft. There are plenty of witches and demigods and demons out there with enough power to track down that poor girl’s soul, and you’ve probably pissed off at least half of them enough to make them want to try.” Rowena looks down at the items she’s pulled from the cabinet, gathers a few of them into her arms, and begins heading for the front door.

“Do you have the power?” Cas asks, watching her move with captivated intensity.

“Oh Castiel,” Rowena drones, “of course I do.” She throws open the front door and starts walking toward the Impala.

“If I were you,” she calls back over her shoulder, “I would grab the rest of those items and bring them to the car. If we’re three hours out from the bunker, then we may just be able to get there in time to find her soul before something else does.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Left alone with Sam in the bunker, you make an incredibly desperate attempt at an escape.

It’s quiet in the bunker. Too quiet, in fact.

Sam’s been sitting in his room since the rest of the boys left with the door locked, doing his best to focus on a book he’s been working his way through for a couple of weeks now. It’s easier knowing there are two locked doors between the two of you, but the fact that you kept up with your scream-singing for at least another four hours into Sam’s watch made it hard to ignore you entirely.

You finally went quiet about two hours ago, initially to Sam’s great relief. Now, however, it’s got him worried. He thinks about how suddenly you stopped, and how utterly complete your silence has been since. The urge to check on you has been growing stronger in the last thirty minutes especially, and has made trying to read an impossibility no matter how hard he tries to concentrate.

Finally, he climbs to his feet and makes his way to his bedroom door. He unlocks it slowly and quietly, as if somehow you’ll be able to hear it if he does it too quickly. Sam sticks his head into the hallway and strains to hear any signs of movement from you, but of course he’s met with nothing but more silence.

Tentatively, he starts the long walk from his room to the dungeon, his steps slow and deliberate as he moves. He still hears nothing from your direction, and he’s not sure anymore if he considers that a positive. You haven’t eaten all day, but he knows from experience that you’ll need to eat and drink less without a soul. It’s not possible that you’re asleep, considering you won’t sleep anymore. There’s no good reason for you to be this quiet after being so loud for so long. Sure, maybe you’ve grown bored enough to stop singing, but Sam doesn’t think that would stop you from trying something else, anything else, to get his attention.

Of course, there’s the very good possibility that this is a trap, a thought which occurs to him more than once as he makes his way down the corridor. As he enters the room that conceals the entrance to the dungeon, he grabs himself a hunting knife from a shelf as he passes it. He doesn’t expect to use it, of course, but he really doesn’t know what you might be planning on the other side of that hidden door, and he’d much rather be safe than sorry.

He calls your name quietly and waits for a response. There’s nothing.

He tries again, louder this time, and still doesn’t hear anything from your side of the wall. Sam hesitates, weighing his options. Either he keeps the door shut and continues to ignore you until the rest of the group returns, or he goes inside and sees what, exactly, you’re up to. Neither option is very appealing. He doesn’t want to deal with whatever mind games you’ve got in store, but if (Chuck forbid) something has gone wrong and you’re hurt or suffering, he won’t be able to forgive himself for doing nothing while he had the chance.

Eventually, his worry for you wins out over his worry for himself. He opens the hidden door, knife in hand, and walks into the room where he finds you on the ground in the overturned chair, unconscious and bleeding from the mouth.

“Kid!” He shouts, panicked. He runs to you where you’ve fallen, frantically pushing your hair out of your face and slapping your cheeks to try and wake you up. God, there’s a lot of blood on your chin. It doesn’t make any sense. What in the hell happened to you alone in this room to leave you in this condition?

He tosses the knife on the ground and runs over to where the keys to your cuffs are hanging. “Don’t worry,” he tells you, even though you’re beyond hearing him at this point, “I got you.”

His hands are shaking as he undoes the first cuff. Your hand is limp and pale beneath his. “Come on, come on,” he chants, moving to the other cuff. It would have been easier to have righted the chair first before trying to untie you, but without knowing what’s happened, he’s too afraid to move your body in any serious way.

Once your hands are free, he moves down to your legs. Unfortunately, Cas used rope to bind you there, and the first knot is proving difficult to loosen. It doesn’t occur to him to grab the knife and use it to cut you loose.

It doesn’t occur to him, which is really a shame.

Because it _does_ occur to you.

Your eyes snap open.

While Sam is preoccupied with untying your legs, you manage to snake the hunting knife from where he’s dropped it, and you have it buried in his back before he even realizes you’ve moved.

He screams in agony and drops to the floor, kicking himself away from you and managing to kick you in the stomach in the process. You grunt and gasp for air, having had the wind knocked out of you momentarily, but you don’t stop moving. You don’t have time. As Sam grasps desperately for the knife handle sticking out of him, you wriggle your legs free of Castiel’s rope and scramble to your feet.

You don’t know how much time you have, or where anyone else is in the bunker. It hasn’t occurred to you that the others may have left; you just know you have to get past Sam before you have a fighting chance at getting out of here. You glance down at him and watch as he wraps his hand around the knife and pulls it out of himself with a horrible shriek. His eyes meet yours and you see the cold, angry betrayal in them.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” you mumble, stepping over him. Your mouth is sore and swollen as you speak; you bit the inside of your cheeks hard enough to draw the blood that distracted Sam in the first place. It was all calculated, of course, and Sam realizes as he watches you walk to the dungeon door that he should have expected it.

“Kid, please,” he gasps, his breath coming in short gasps as he presses his hands against his wounds to try to stop the bleeding.

“I wish there was another way,” you say regretfully, and part of you means it. “But you’re going to try and fix me, and I can’t let you do that.” You stop at the door and watch him writhe on the floor. When he realizes what you’re about to do, his eyes widen in fear.

“Don’t worry,” you reassure him, “I’ll tell them where you are. You won’t bleed out. I didn’t stab you deep enough for that.” You reach across the doorway and grab the handle.

“No, don’t—” Sam pleads, but you ignore his cries.

You slam the door shut and lock it from the outside. You hear Sam shouting unintelligibly on the other side as you turn quickly and run into the hallway.

Once in the corridor, you pause and listen for the sounds of the others coming running. You hear nothing. That bodes well. That bodes very well. If anyone else were here, they would have come at the first sound of trouble. You must be alone here, aside from Sammy, which at least gives you freedom of movement. You still don’t know where the others are or when they’ll be coming back, so you’ll have to move quickly, but moving quickly is better than not moving at all. Half a day chained to a god damned chair in a dank basement has certainly driven that point home.

You move in the direction of your bedroom. You’ll need clean clothes before anything else, and you’ll need to wash your face. You won’t get very far in a town like Lebanon covered in dried blood.

You throw open the door to your room and go quickly through the motions, tearing through your drawers and closet and throwing various items of clothing into a bag you pull out from under your bed. Your next stop is the bathroom, where you scrub your face raw with a washcloth, making sure there’s not a single trace of blood left anywhere you can see. You peel off your t-shirt, your bra, and strip down to your panties as fast as you can before pulling on the most non-descript outfit you can think of: a pair of bootcut jeans, a black tank top, and a green-and-blue plaid flannel. You grab your bug-out bag, a pair of boots, and a black motorcycle jacket and head out the door. You’re sure you’ve forgotten plenty of things, but your priority right now is getting out and hitting the road. You don’t have time to double-check yourself, because, sweetheart, if you are not fast as hell in this get away, you will most assuredly wreck yourself.

You’re haphazardly pulling on your boots as you stumble down the hall, painfully aware of Sam’s distant cries in the dungeon. Of course you wish there had been another way—you aren’t straight-up evil—but he really left you with no other choice. None of them did. And you have to get away from them all before they have time to track down Juliet (which they’ve probably already done) and force-feed you your own soul.

The sweet air of freedom is moments away; you can feel it. Your heart is pounding in your chest as you make your mad dash through the bunker toward the exit, glancing at every doorway and down every offshoot corridor in case Dean or Cas or Jack are waiting. It’s exhilarating and infuriating all at once.

Patience, you tell yourself. You’re almost home free.

You’re in the main entryway now, bag slung over your shoulder, boots on but untied, moto jacket zipped up halfway. The end is in sight. You run up the stairs two at a time, impressed by your own speed, and throw open the door with a sigh of relief.

But Dean is there, eyes wide with surprise at the sight of you.

“Fuck—” you say, dropping your bag.

He punches you hard enough in the face to knock you out.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group is forced to decide what to do with you.

They carry you back into the dungeon where they find Sam writhing in pain on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

“Sam!” Dean shouts, nearly dropping you at the sight of Sam. Instead, he thankfully has the wherewithal to pass you to Cas as he drops to his knees at his brother’s side. “What the hell happened?”

Sam grimaces in pain and draws in a sharp breath from between clenched teeth. “I thought she was hurt,” he breathes heavily, still clutching at his back. Dean is trying to push his hands away to see how bad the damage is, but Sam won’t let him. “She was on the ground, bleeding from her mouth. I thought—” Dean finally manages to uncover the wound and Sam shouts in pain. He takes a moment to recover, trying to slow his breathing as Dean examines the injury. “I thought she was hurt. I started to untie her. She stabbed me and made a run for it.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his eyes flashing red. “We caught her just as she made it to the front door.”

At this point, Sam finally looks up and sees your unconscious body in Cas’s arms. He looks past Cas and sees Jack and Rowena lingering by the doorway. “What did you do to her?” Sam asks, his voice shaking.

Dean laughs bitterly at that response. “She nearly guts you, and you still ask what I did to her?” A dark glance from Sam shuts him up. “I knocked her out, okay? She’s fine.’

“She won’t be for much longer,” Rowena chimes in from her place just inside the doorway. Dean glowers in her direction. “I’m sorry to spoil this touching family moment, but if she’s progressed to the point where she’s literally stabbing Samuel to escape, then I’d say we need to do this retrieval spell now before it’s too late.”

Dean turns his focus back to Sam. “Can you walk?”

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

Dean then turns with panic in his eyes to Cas, who nods quickly. “I can heal him, if you’ll take her.” Cas offers Dean your body.

Dean takes you back reluctantly, sickened by how hesitant he is to help you right now. He knows this isn’t you, can’t be you, but it walks and talks like you, and he can’t wrap his mind around it fully. It was the same way he felt when Sam lost his soul, which is an issue he still hasn’t completely dealt with even after all these years. Truth be told, he’s still not sure he’s forgiven Sam for everything that happened back then, no matter how much he tells himself he has. He holds you firmly, staring down into your pale, slack face, trying to remind himself how much he loves you. How much he’s always loved you. It’s proving damn near impossible listening to the sounds Sam’s making as he struggles to pull himself upright on the floor below.

Cas kneels next to Sam and touches two fingers to his forehead. There’s a moment of blinding blue light from the knife wound, and then all is well. Sam puts his hands over his newly healed flesh like he doesn’t quite believe it, then breathes a sigh of relief. He climbs slowly to his feet, still a little unsure of himself, and makes his way to where Dean is holding you. He smooths your hair back across your forehead and shakes his head.

“Damn it, kid,” he mumbles, trying to keep his fury at what you’ve done separate from the person he’s always known you to be. It’s harder than he thought. He balls his hands into fists and takes a step back.

Rowena walks between the boys and places a hand on both Dean and Sam’s arms. “We need to do this now. Every moment she’s severed from her soul, the chances of getting her back the way she was diminishes.”

The boys all exchange frightened glances.

“You mean there’s a chance she doesn’t come back from this?” Sam croaks.

Rowena looks down at your peaceful face and strokes your cheek gently. “I’m afraid so. Souls aren’t meant to be unbound and unkept, and their bodies find a way of rejecting them after a while.”

“How do we do this?” Dean ask, his arms starting to grow tired from the weight of holding you.

“Do you have an infirmary?” Rowena asks. Dean nods.

“Take her there,” she commands. “We’ll need a bed to tie her to and enough room in case things get… messy.”

“Messy?” Jack speaks up at last.

Rowena meets everyone’s eyes individually and holds their gaze for a moment. “This is not going to be a pleasant experience, boys,” she holds Dean’s eyes the longest. “This is going to hurt her more than anything has ever hurt her before. Her body _is_ going to try and reject her soul, and we’re all unfortunately going to be present for it. It could very well be bloody if it’s as bad as I think it might be.”

Nobody moves or speaks for a moment. Dean looks down at your face again and his anger fades as quickly as it rose. No matter what you’ve put them through the past couple of days, he can’t bear the thought of losing you to this. Not when all you wanted was simply to end the pain you’d been suffering silently for months while he looked on and did nothing.

He looks up and locks eyes with Sam, whose face is grim and pale, despite just being healed by Cas. Even in spite of what you’ve just done to him, Sam can’t hold it against you. How could he? He’s done just as bad or worse. He let his brother get turned, for Christ’s sake. Sam remembers how it was, how good it felt to be freed from the burden of his soul, and exactly how desperate he was not to get it back. Hell, he would have stabbed you to escape if given the chance. Sam gives his brother the briefest of nods

“We fix her,” Sam says. “Whatever it takes.” He turns to look at Cas.

“Whatever it takes,” Cas agrees. Jack nods silently.

Rowena is the last to nod. “Then let’s get started, shall we?” She gestures toward the door and follows Dean out as he starts the very long walk from the dungeon to the infirmary.

Whatever it takes.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Down in the infirmary, the group begins the incantation that will recover your soul.

The air in the infirmary is thick and heavy with dread. The four men—YOUR four men—and Rowena stand by your bedside, where you’ve been heavily strapped down. They’ve surrounded themselves with the objects Rowena’s brought to conduct her spell, complete with a large urn at the foot of your bed. The urn, of course, is the vessel that will hold your soul until it’s returned to you.

If it can even be returned to you, that is.

The tension hums in the air like static. This will work, they all tell themselves. Must work. They can’t allow themselves to consider the alternative. Even Rowena, with her instincts of self-preservation at any cost, feels the immense weight of this task on her shoulders. They all avoid each other’s eyes as they stand around you, preferring instead to focus anything and everything else they can. The urn seems to be a favorite focal point; they all seemed transfixed by it and the purpose it’s about to serve.

“Once the ritual begins,” Rowena warns, her voice dark, “I cannot stop for any reason. Do you all understand that?” They each nod slowly, but the witch seems doubtful. “No matter what you see or hear, no matter what happens to her, if I stop, all hope is lost.”

“We get it,” Dean growls, his jaw clenched tightly.

Rowena turns to him sharply. “I very much hope you do, Dean, because this is not the sort of magic that can or should be undertaken lightly. Just being present for it puts you all in danger.”

Sam clears his throat to draw her attention. “How much danger does it put you in?” he asks.

Rowena’s face softens, but doesn’t fall. “Never you mind about that, Samuel.”

“How much?” Dean echoes gruffly.

Rowena sighs deeply. “Enough trouble that if I try and stop it, I probably don’t make it out of this room alive.” The gravity of the situation finally hits home and the room falls silent again. “If any of you wants out, now is the time, boys.”

Nobody moves. They all stand firm in their resolve, their minds made up, their decisions made. Rowena nods at them gratefully.

“Then let’s begin.”

She lifts her hands over your unconscious form and starts moving them upward, sweeping from your feet up to your head in long, graceful movements. Her eyes close gently as she does this, her face set firmly in her concentration. She begins muttering, softly at first, then growing louder as she continues the incantation:

_“Adducere ex aethere_

_Spiritus_

_Animus_

_Essentia_

_Anima eius_

_Adducere_

_Alliges duplicia_

_Perditum es_

_Reditio es_

_Inventi sunt_

_Veni domum…”_

Her eyes snap open, and they’re glowing a dim purple. Jack gasps in spite of himself. Dean, Sam, and Cas all swallow audibly. Rowena holds her hands above your heart center, and a tunnel of that dim purple light begins flowing into your chest just above the solar plexus.

“Samuel,” Rowena says, her voice sounding strange and echoing with power, “Take up those three black candles and light them now. Time for everyone to do his part.”

Sam does as he’s told, and arranges them around you (one on each side and one at your feet in front of the urn) as he and Rowena discussed before starting the spell. Seeing this done, Dean reaches into a black velvet bag at his feet and pulls out a human skull. If it disturbs him, his face doesn’t show it. He places it on the pillow directly above your head and nods to Cas, who produces a rather sinister looking knife from his coat pocket and hands it to Dean. Dean uses this to slice open his palm, wincing as he does, then drags the wound across the top of the skull, smearing it red with his blood. Cas puts his palm over the fresh blood and repeats a selection of the words Rowena has been muttering:

_“Perditum es_

_Reditio es_

_Inventi sunt.”_

As soon as he does this, the skull begins to shake and glow. It fills with a bright blue light, which pours out of its empty sockets like running water. Cas repeats the phrase again, and the skull’s shaking increases. It’s your soul, burning white hot with the desire to flee its new prison and escape entirely its old one.

Rowena moves quickly up to the top of the bed, the purple light following her and snaking its way to the blue light burning inside the skull. The colors seem to fight each other for a moment, if that’s possible. She grips the skull tightly in her hands, suddenly wincing in pain as if she’s touching something hot. The boys all move forward to help her instinctively, but she shakes her head to wave them off, now muttering the incantation under her breath.

She carries the skull down to the foot of the bed where the urn is sitting, passing it over your body as she moves. The blue and purple light dance across your skin like a lightning storm, leaving little traces of their power in their wake.

Rowena stops muttering just long enough to hiss one word, “Jack.”

Jack wastes no time. He removes the top of the urn takes the skull from Rowena’s hands. If it burns him, he makes no show of it. Instead, he silently holds it directly above the urn’s opening and waits for Rowena to give the signal. She finishes the incantation one final time, then nods at Jack.

Jack grips both sides of the skull as tightly as he can and squeezes his hands together. It doesn’t take long; the skull is quickly obliterated by the pressure, and, just as quickly as it collapses, the purple light pours into the urn, carrying the blue light of your soul with it. Cas is immediately by Jack’s side, slamming the top back onto the urn. It shudders for a moment and then is still. Both Jack and Rowena collapse onto the floor, breathing heavily.

Dean and Cas kneel beside Jack, who rests most of his weight against Castiel’s shoulder as he tries his best to recover. Sam, meanwhile, has made his way to Rowena, whom he is now essentially cradling in his lap as she struggles to catch her breath.

“That,” Rowena gasps, raising a shaking hand to her forehead to wipe off the sweat that’s beading there, “was the easy part.” She makes very deliberate eye contact with Samuel. “You’ve had a very serious taste of what comes next.”

Sam tries to swallow the bitterness that rises in the back of his throat, but can’t quite do it. He nods quickly, more of a twitch of his head than anything else. He remembers, all right. He remembers screaming, begging Death not to return his soul. He remembers the blinding, searing pain of the thing being forced back inside him. He remembers Death’s wall, and his warning. Sam didn’t want to know what he had done while soulless. Would you? Sam doesn’t think so.

He also thinks you don’t have a choice.

When Rowena’s recovered enough to sit up on her own, she does so. Jack has been fine for a few minutes at this point, but it terrifies all of them that he was anywhere near as shaken as he was. Terrified for themselves, yes, but far more terrified for what it will mean for you. More nervous glances are exchanged, and Rowena catches them all.

“Don’t get cold feet now,” she warns, half-joking. “The fact that we’ve managed to bring her soul out of the ether is a huge victory. That’s half the job done.”

“And the other half?” Dean rasps.

“The other half, we’ll have to get to quickly,” Rowena says, motioning to urn, which they all notice is beginning to show hairline fractures around the base. “Her soul doesn’t want to return to her body, and that urn isn’t meant to hold it for long.”

“Buckle up, boys,” she instructs, taking note that all of them are still essentially laid out on the floor from what’s meant to be the easiest part of all this. She sighs, the weight of the world in her exhalation. “It’s going to be a very bumpy ride.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've summoned your soul--now they have to return it to your body in a ritual that puts all of them in danger.

It takes about ten minutes for everyone in the group to be capable of standing on their own two feet again. The urn, meanwhile, has started to quiver gently, a fact which is lost on nobody as they scramble to recover from the first part of the ritual. Worryingly, the blue light of your soul is beginning to leak around the lip of the lid. Fooling themselves into thinking they have more time has become an impossibility.

“Come,” Rowena commands, taking up the urn and bringing it to the head of the bed where she stands to the right of your torso. The others follow, in various stages of disbelief at what is about to happen.

(At what’s already happened, to be perfectly honest.)

Jack and Sam stand beside Rowena on the right side of the bed; Cas and Dean take their places on the left side. The three black candles Sam lit continue to burn at the foot of the bed, their flames casting an eerie, discomforting glow over the group in spite of the overhead lights in the infirmary. Rowena clutches the urn to her chest. She feels it trembling against her ribcage, feels your soul trying desperately to get free.

“You remember what we talked about?” Rowena asks solemnly. The boys nod. “Good. Then everyone cut themselves and make the symbol.”

Cas produces that nifty looking dagger again as everyone presents their fingers to him without hesitation. He cuts them all, including his own and Rowena’s. Following Rowena’s lead, they all draw a strange, Druidic symbol at the base of their throats just above the place where their collarbones meet. “This symbol will form the circle that will keep her soul trapped should it try to flee. Once you join hands, that circle will be cast and _cannot_ be broken by any of us for any reason. Do you understand?”

“We’ve been through this at least ten times, Rowena,” Dean grumbles, wiping the cut on his finger against his jeans in a half-assed effort to stop the bleeding.

Rowena narrows her eyes and grits her teeth. “And we’ll go through it ten more times if we have to. With the four of you _as_ the circle, you are in immediate danger of her soul trying to destroy you to break free if and when her body rejects it. If it manages to get free this time, there is no chance of ever finding it again, and a very good chance that at least one of you will end up dead in its efforts to escape.”

Dean shuts his mouth quickly and drops his gaze to the floor. He knows how serious this is—of course he does—but a part of him still isn’t willing to accept it. A part of him thinks there’s still a way out of this that doesn’t involve life-or-death black magic or blood sigils or any of the crazy, horrible things they’re currently doing to correct what was done to you. He doesn’t know what that way is, or how it could possibly still exist, but he wants it to be true, damn it. After everything they’ve been through, after everything they’ve suffered getting this far, don’t they at least have the right to that?

Rowena’s voice brings him back to reality. “Let’s get our girl back.”

The answer, of course, is no.

Cas, Dean, Jack, and Sam all join hands. Rowena is the only one who doesn’t, since she’ll be performing the ritual herself. She’s since moved into the space between Sam and Jack, into the circle, with the urn in her hands and balanced precariously on your stomach. She clears her throat to begin, just as your eyes start to flutter open.

“Shit,” Dean mumbles, his grip on Cas’s hand tightening for just a moment.

You stir slowly, your head weighing about a million pounds. “What…?” you try to speak, but your mouth is numb and swollen from a combination of Dean’s sucker punch and your little stunt biting your cheek to escape from Sammy. “What’s happening?” You look around and see the group surrounding you. Rowena is a surprising addition. She looks at you with pity in her eyes, and it doesn’t take long after that to figure out what’s about to happen.

“NO!” You scream, bucking against your restraints. Luckily, you’re strapped in in such a way as to barely be able to move at all. The bed shakes a little, but nothing more than that. You’re stuck, and you are going nowhere fast. The panic sets in immediately, both at being restrained, and at knowing what your friends are about to do to you. They all watch you in a mixture of sadness and regret, which only makes it worse.

“No, please!” You beg, your voice raw with emotion. “Please don’t do this to me.” Nobody will make eye contact with you. You try desperately to get someone, anyone, to look at you, but they are deliberately avoiding your gaze. “Please don’t do it. I swear, I’ll figure out how to manage it.” You turn to Sam, whose face is flushed with emotion. “Sammy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stabbed you—I know that. I promise it will never happen again, only please, please don’t let them do this to me.”

Rowena places her hand on your belly and you recoil from her touch as much as your restraints allow you. “I’m sorry, my love, but this is the only way to save you.” She reaches up to your lips and brushes them gently with her fingertips. “Silentium,” she mutters, and you are suddenly silent.

Tears are streaming down from the corners of your eyes as you fight futilely against the restraints, feeling your muscles and ligaments tear as you try to free yourself. Jack looks for a moment like he might try to help you, but Dean squeezes his hand hard enough to make him wince, and the kid immediately falls back in line.

“We do this now,” Sam orders, and Rowena nods in agreement.

She presses the urn harder into your stomach and mutters some words in a language none of them recognize. If the first part of the spell was in Latin, this is in something stranger and more archaic. Even Cas is having a difficult time placing it.

As Rowena speaks, she moves up within the circle to your throat, where she draws a line across it from ear to ear. The purple light from before appears in a solid line there, like she’s just metaphysically cut open your neck without drawing a drop of blood.

As she continues her incantation, the purple grows brighter and wider, until the light almost looks like a second mouth beneath your chin. The urn, in turn, has begun shaking violently, as though the soul inside knows what’s coming. Sure enough, Rowena removes the top, and “pours” the contents of the urn into that wide, gaping purple mouth.

Your soul fights against being drawn inside, but the purple light is powerful. The fact that the same purple light drew it into the urn in the first place seems to have weakened it, which is good. The boys all watch, fascinated, as your soul slips into this makeshift mouth and disappears down your throat and into your chest cavity. Your body arches back against the bed, lifting your ribcage high into the air as your soul passes into you. Your face twists in agony, and your mouth opens in in a silent scream. It’s horrible to watch, but nobody will look away. They need to see this through, no matter what.

You fall back against the bed, silent, panting, and unmoving. The others look at each other uneasily, sure that it would have been harder than this. Rowena leans forward and places her mouth against yours, breathing that purple light into you as if performing some kind of magical CPR. As soon as the last of it is in you, you buck backwards against the bed so violently, the urn falls to the floor and shatters. The group tries to take a step back, but that would mean letting go of each other’s hands, so they stand their ground.

You buck backwards again and again, so forcefully it’s amazing that they haven’t heard you break your back in the act. Rowena has placed both hands over the purple smile in your throat like she’s trying to force something back, still shouting in that strange language while the others look on.

Without warning, Rowena lets out a terrible scream and is nearly thrown out of the circle, landing instead on the floor at Sam’s feet in a heap. Your soul comes flying out of the not-a-hole in your neck and flits around the circle like a wasp trying to escape a house on a hot summer day. The boys have formed an effective wall; the soul has nowhere to go, but keeps beating against all of them as it tries to find a weak spot. Each hit feels like a small volt of electricity, and each one hurts more than the last. They’re not sure how much longer they can keep this up.

Rowena, meanwhile, is trying to recover on the floor. She tries to lift herself up, but her arms are shaking. Finally, she crawls to her feet and lifts her head. Sam gasps when he sees there’s blood dripping from her nose down the front of her shirt.

“Rowena—” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“There’s no time, Samuel. Hold the line.” She moves back to you and the purple mouth and places her hands around the edges, beginning to chant her bizarre language again until she’s hoarse from the volume. You’re still silently screaming and writhing beneath her.

Sam’s eyes move to your face, and he nearly drops Cas and Jack’s hands when he sees what’s been done to you. There’s blood pouring out of every orifice: your mouth, your nose, your ears, and your eyes. So much blood, it doesn’t seem possible that it’s coming from one person. You’re seizing now, your movements short, violent, and jerky under the restraints. Rowena is screaming her spell now, commanding your soul to return to its earthly vessel where it belongs.

“Rowena,” Sam shouts at last, “you’re killing her!”

Rowena pauses her spell just long enough to make pointed eye contact with the younger Winchester. “If I stop now, it WILL kill her, and likely all of us. Shut up, and hold the line.”

She turns her attention back to her words and her will. Dean looks on with silent tears standing in his eyes. Jack and Cas watch with a mixture of horror and awe. This is like nothing they’ve ever seen before. Even when Death returned Sam’s soul to him after the horrors of the cage, it wasn’t nearly this violent or awful. Your soul is desperate to get away, and your body is just as desperate to be rid of it.

Without warning, Rowena’s voice drops to nearly a whisper. The suddenness of it is shocking. The four boys can barely breathe, they’re so scared at what might happen if something goes wrong. Their focus is entirely on Rowena. Even you have finally stopped moving, having slipped back into some version of unconsciousness vaguely resembling a fugue state.

Rowena’s whispers are harsh, intense. More of a hiss than a human sound. Something about it causes your soul to slow down. It drones drunkenly like a wasp whose nest has been smoked out, almost like it’s been drugged. It lumbers slowly away from where it’s been battering Dean and moves closer and closer to the gaping purple slice in your neck. Slowly, unbelievably, it starts to slip inside. The purple light reaches out in tendrils to claim it and drag it like an octopus collecting its prey into the depths of your body. Rowena continues whispering until the blue light has all but disappeared and, when it has, she places both hands over the purple gash and closes her eyes.  


“So mote it be,” she murmurs, barely loud enough for anyone to hear. When she opens her eyes, they’re the color they’re meant to be, and when she pulls back her hands, the purple smile is gone and your neck is whole and perfect again.

She heaves a shuddering breath and slips to her knees. “You can release your hands now, boys,” she says, and they do so with a hint of trepidation. Everyone is afraid to move or breath, lest they be wrong that the spell is over.

“Did it—” Cas starts.

Rowena collapses on the floor, unconscious

“Rowena!” Sam shouts, dropping to his knees beside her almost as quickly as she collapsed. He places his fingers against her throat and feels for a pulse. “She’s alive, but it’s thready. Cas, do you think you could…” But Cas is already there, trying to heal her. He shakes his head.

“This isn’t something I can heal. It’s not an injury, exactly. Doing this level of spell must have expended a terrific amount of energy. She needs rest and care, immediately,” Cas concludes, his voice strong and unwavering.

Sam nods. “She’ll stay here then. We’ll make sure she’s okay.” He scoops her up in his arms and pushes up to a standing position. Then, he looks at you. There’s blood all over your face, soaking into the pillow and your bedclothes. Sam sets Rowena down gently in the bed next to you and then moves back to your side.

“What about her?” He asks Cas.

Cas places a hand on your forehead and closes his eyes for a moment. “She’s alive. Barely.”

“What about her soul?” Dean asks, his voice strangled.

“I’m not sure checking her in this condition is the best option. I believe the spell worked, but her body is so battered right now, I fear what my powers might do to her.”

Dean nods. “I guess all we can do is wait at this point.”

“We saw the soul go into her, didn’t we?” Jack pipes up, finally coming closer to stand next to his surrogate family.

“Let’s hope so,” Dean says. It’s not very optimistic, but it’s the best he’s got right now. “We keep her strapped down for a few days, make sure the ritual’s taken before we let her lose. Meantime, we watch over her and Rowena, and nurse ‘em both back to health.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam says with a shuddering breath. He lets himself sit on the edge of your bed.

“I’d like to clean her face,” Jack says quietly as he looks down at you. Cas, Dean, and Sam exchange a look behind his back.

“I think that would be a good idea,” Cas says. “Why don’t you go get a rag from the other room?” Jack nods and is gone.

Once they’re alone, Sam, Cas, and Dean, each exhale as though they’ve been holding their breaths this entire time.

“Do you really think it worked?” Sam asks. Dean looks expectantly at Cas.

“Like I said, I worry about checking her now,” Cas offers, “but I think what we saw was the spell working.”

Dean nods briefly. “Why don’t you two go grab us some dinner? Me and the kid will get her and Rowena cleaned up.” Sam and Cas look at him curiously, but decide not to press it. They both leave the room without another word.

Dean walks to the top of your bed where your face, bloody and swollen, is resting against your pillow. He glances behind him quickly to make sure Jack hasn’t come back into the room, and then leans down and kisses you lovingly on your temple.

“I need you to be all right, kid,” he tells you, even though he knows you can’t hear. He leans closer and places a kiss on your bloody lips. “You got this.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up in a place both familiar and unfamiliar, trying to piece together the events of the past couple of days.

You wake up unsure of your surroundings. You think you’re in a motel room; it certainly looks like plenty of the ones you’ve slept in before, but something’s wrong with the room. You’re lying on top of the ugly green comforter rather than under the blankets, which makes no sense considering how cold you are. Most importantly, and the strangest thing about your situation that you immediately notice, is that your shoes are on, and your shirt is stained with blood.

“Where am I?” you ask out loud, as though asking the question will somehow help you gain your bearings. You swing your legs over the side of the bed and push yourself to your feet. Why the hell is it so cold in here?

You slowly make your way to the only window in the room, whose curtain is drawn shut, rubbing your arms in an effort to create some warmth. When you pull back the curtain, what you see is so unexpected it nearly knocks you over.

Outside the window is a blinding white nothingness. There’s no _there_ there, as it were—just pure, white, nothing. You stare at it for as long as your eyes will let you before you’re finally driven to close the curtain and turn away to regain your senses.

You begin to hyperventilate. “What the fuck is going on?” You walk back to the bed and take a look around. The reason this motel room looks both familiar and wrong, you realize, is because it’s literally every single motel room you’ve ever stayed in in your life, somehow. You don’t understand how that can be possible, but apparently it is. When you look at the bedspreads, you notice they’re not green necessarily, because they’re also blue, plaid, paisley, and every other color and pattern of bedspread you’ve slept under in your long life as a hunter. There’s one king-sized bed, but also two queens. There’s a couch, and also not a couch. The door to the bathroom is both on the north side of the room, and the south side, and the west side, and the east side. The one thing you don’t see, however, is an exit door. It appears you’re trapped in this hellscape of a motel room, watching it subtly shift from one version of itself to another every time you move your head or blink.

You sink down on to the bed you woke up on and squeeze your eyes shut, trying to will yourself out of what you think has to be, must be a dream. You draw in long, deep breaths to calm the pounding of your heart, but all of it does nothing when you open your eyes and see the room is still changing all around you. You let out a low moan and curl into a ball on your side, paralyzed by fear.

“Oh, come on, kiddo,” you hear a familiar voice say from across the room. You look up and are surprised (and also not surprised, given the circumstances) to see yourself sitting in a chair (a hundred chairs) that keeps flickering in and out of existence. “You’re gonna let this get to you _that_ easily?” The other you snorts. “They shouldn’t have bothered bringing you back if this is how you’re gonna behave.”

You push yourself up onto your elbows and gape at yourself. “What is this?”

“This,” the other you says, spinning in a slow circle with her arms extended, “is what your scrambled little head has come up with to deal with everything that’s happening to you.”

Your face screws up into a question mark. “What’s happening to me?”

The other you smiles sarcastically. “Oh, sweetie.” She tsk-tsks and shakes her head. “Gotta think harder than that.”

You try to think back over the last couple of days, but you’re drawing a blank. There’s an empty spot in your head where that time should be. The last thing you can remember clearly is drinking tea at your appointment with Juliet. You don’t even remember what the two of you talked about—just that everything beyond that is a dark, grey fog. If you squint hard enough, you imagine, you can make out shapes in that mist, but something in your mind is warning you very loudly **not** to do that. Alarm bells are going off and you don’t want to disturb whatever it is they’re warning you against.

You shake your head back at your other self and drop your eyes to the floor. “No, there’s nothing there. It’s… dark.”

“Not completely dark, kid.” The voice of Other You has changed. You know that voice. You look up and see Dean sitting across from you. “You’re trying not to remember.”

You swallow, hard. Dean’s eyes bore into yours, and for a moment you see them as they were the moment you told him you’d slept with Sam. Your own eyes widen in shock and hurt, and Dean smiles at you because he knows exactly what you’ve just seen.

"Bingo,” he says.

You cover your mouth with your hand and make a small choking noise. “No. I didn’t… I wouldn’t have said that to you.”

“Just like you’d never have slept with Sammy, right?” Dean laughs, all levity. “Don’t sweat it, sweetheart. That’s really the least of your worries.”

Your hand falls to your throat as you swallow again, afraid to ask the the question, but knowing not asking it can only make things worse. “What else did I do?”

Dean laughs again, really getting into it. By the time he catches his breath, it’s a full-on crack-up, complete with the requisite tears-in-the-eyes of proper laughter. “Oh man. Between trying to bang me, stabbing Sammy, and telling Jack you’d never be a mother to him, I’d say you’ve got enough irons in the fire to keep the apologies going for the rest of your lifetime.”

Your lower lip begins to tremble. No. You wouldn’t have done all that. That’s impossible. You look at Dean with tears in your eyes. “How could I—” the words die in your throat. “ _Why_ would I do that?”

Dean flickers out of this fake reality, and for a moment you’re alone. You cover your face in your hands and start to cry, confused and unsure of what to make of any of this. Is this just a nightmare you’re having?

“It’s no dream,” you hear your own voice again and whirl around to see Other You standing behind you on the other side of the bed/beds.

“What are you?” you demand, your voice stressed to the point of breaking.

“I’m you, of course,” Other You says, voice saccharine and dripping with honey. The other you sits down on the bed and scoots so she’s basically back-to-back with you. “I mean, not _you_ you. I’m the you you’d be if they hadn’t done the ritual. I’m the you they had to pop back in the box.”

You shake your head. “I don’t understand. Will you please just be fucking straight with me?”

Other You grins. “Now **that** sounds more like us!” The other you turns enough to take your shoulders in her hands and squeezes them gently. “I, sweetie, am you without a soul.”

“A soul?” you repeat, staring ahead at the shifting colors and shapes of the room.

Other You massages your shoulders gently, moving her head so her lips are directly against your ear. “Remember yet?” she hisses, pressing her mouth against you in a bitter kiss.

And suddenly you do. You remember everything. You remember the spell at Juliet’s, coming home in the middle of movie night, Castiel forcing his hand into your chest. You remember trying to seduce Dean and, when you couldn’t, throwing the fact that you’d slept with Sam in his face. You remember Cas hurling you into the wall. You remember telling Jack you didn’t love him. You remember stabbing Sam in the back, and Dean punching you unconscious.

Most of all, you remember the pain of Rowena’s ritual. You remember the feeling of being ripped apart on the inside as your soul tried to tear its way out of your body. You remember the faces of your friends standing stalwart by your side as Rowena’s magic worked its way through you. You remember wanting to die, and the one moment of clear thought when you finally decided you could live forever so long as you never felt this sort of pain again.

Now here you are, in this Nowhere Motel, surrounded by nothingness in your own mind, as the soulless version of you rubs your back and kisses your ears.

You take in a deep, shuddering breath and try to stop the tears from coming. It’s an impossible task. Other You strokes your hair gently, doing her best to comfort you for whatever reason your soulless doppelganger might have for comforting you.

“What happens now?” you manage at last, your breath hitching.

Other You sighs and shrugs. “I’m not sure. In theory, you recover and go back to whatever is waiting for you out there,” she moves her head in the direction of the window of nothing. “If you don’t recover… Well, I guess it’s just you and me and the rest of the figments of your imagination for God knows how long.”

“And if I make it back out there,” you sniffle, hating the sound of your voice so weak in your own ears, “what happens to you?”

Other You pulls your hair back into a ponytail and lets it gently cascade across your back and shoulders. “Oh, I don’t go anywhere,” she says, leaning in to hug you gently against her chest. “I’ll always be here, sweetheart.”

She leans her head against your shoulder and smiles. “I always have been.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Rowena recovers, the boys sit vigil by your bedside and wait for you to come to.

It’s been a day and a half and you haven’t moved. The boys have stood vigil by your bedside since the ritual, splitting their time between watching you and caring for a slowly-recovering Rowena.

Rowena finally stirred about six hours after all was said and done, coming to just enough to make a somewhat sexual comment about Samuel’s jeans before passing out again. Since then, she’s come around considerably, and has been sitting up in bed, eating, drinking, and talking. She’s tired, drained, but otherwise unharmed. It does all of their morale good to see her up and about (so to speak) so quickly.

You, on the other hand, are worrying the hell out of everyone, Rowena included. Your breath and pulse are both light as a feather, fleeting at best, and the color has completely drained from your body. You look like a corpse, save for the shallow movements of your chest every now and then, and the strange, strangled noises you occasionally make as though you’re in the midst of a series of nightmares wherever you are in your mind.

It’s now the middle of the night. Rowena is sleeping beside you, Jack and Cas are somewhere else in the bunker (presumably not sleeping, but one can never tell with Jack), Dean is taking a much-needed rest, and Sam is left alone to watch over you for the time being. He’s a hulking figure at your bedside, sitting in a chair with his hands laced together under his chin as he stares down at your pale, empty face.

Of the group, Sam seems to have been taking this the hardest. He hasn’t left your side for longer than a couple hours at a time since you (they assume) got your soul back. Part of it is having lived through that horror himself; part of it is how responsible he feels for all of it. He hasn’t been able to forgive himself for not talking to you sooner since Dean (correctly) accused him of sleeping with you all those years ago. Even though you agreed it wouldn’t change anything between the two of you, he feels like it should have meant more—at least enough for him to have stepped in when he saw you drowning instead of turning a blind eye and ignoring the obvious pain you were in. If he’d just said something a month ago, a week ago, hell, five days ago, this whole thing could have been avoided. He knows Dean is feeling guilty about it too, but that one element of intimacy between Sam and you makes the guilt a thousand times worse, regardless of the fact that you’ve never spoken about what happened or even acknowledged it since it occurred.

Without much thought, Sam slips his hand into yours and squeezes it, hoping against hope he’ll feel something, anything, in return, but you continue to lie there, cold and unmoving. He exhales heavily and tries to blink back the tears forming in his eyes. He rubs his thumb along yours, thinking back to the night you and he had sex, how desperate and sad you both were, and how all that pain and heartache actually disappeared for the short time you were together physically. He would give anything to find that comfort again now, a thought which leaves him awash in shame as he continues to stroke the side of your thumb.

“Anything?” A voice from behind him startles him, but he doesn’t pull his hand away from yours. Sam turns to see his brother walking down the infirmary stairs with two cups of coffee in his hand.

“No,” Sam replies, his voice dark and wooden.

“You gotta sleep sometime, man,” Dean says, approaching Sam and passing a mug to him. Sam takes it with his free hand, noticing that Dean’s eyes linger for just a moment on the hand of his that’s holding yours. “You’re not doing her any good sitting here staring at her.”

“I know that, Dean,” he replies grumpily. He takes a sip of the coffee and nearly spits it out. “Did you put liquor in this?”

Dean half-salutes, half-cheerses him with his own mug. “Dad’s best recipe. Half a cup of whiskey, half a cup of coffee.”

“A warning would have been nice.”

“Lots of things would have been nice before we got to this point,” Dean counters quietly, taking a sip of his own coffee and relishing in its warmth as it melts down into his belly. Sam is about to answer, but shuts his mouth, instead focusing on your face again and doing his best to ignore his brother in hopes that he’ll turn around and leave him to his thoughts. “Seriously, Sammy—”

“Dean, whatever you’re about to say, I don’t need to hear it.”

“Yeah, I think you do,” Dean says, his voice a low warning. “Punishing yourself isn’t going to help her.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Sam replies, his eyes never leaving your face.

“Damn straight, I think you don’t know that,” Dean admonishes him, trying his best to keep quiet so as not to wake Rowena while still getting the point across to Sam. “I think you’ll sit here and let your guilt eat away at you until you’re in the same state she’s in if I don’t come in here and pull you out.”

“What the hell do you know about my guilt, Dean?”

“Tell me it’s not true and I’ll walk out of this room right now.”

Sam opens his mouth to offer a retort, but his older brother is right. He’s doing exactly what Dean says he’s doing for reasons he only half understands.

Dean watches the emotions pass over Sammy’s face and his heart aches at the sight. He knows precisely what’s going on in Sam’s head because the same thing would be going through his if he’d ever slept with you and then blatantly ignored your decline, no matter how many years had passed since you’d hooked up.

Hell, it’s not like he’s not already blaming himself for missing the mark so badly on this one. He’s the oldest, always has been. It’s always been his job to look out for Sammy, and ever since you’ve been in his life, it’s been his job to look out for you just the same. Since discovering you’d lost your soul, he’s had both his and your dads’ voices in his head, questioning him, berating him for letting you get so far gone without stepping in and pulling you back from the edge.

It’s never gotten easier, letting you down. And why should it? He feels now like he’s been failing you slowly your whole life together, like all the little times he’s disappointed you have just been leading to this horrible, unconscionable situation, to this one moment _here_ in this infirmary. He’d love to fall apart, but he can’t—he won’t—for Sam’s sake. He has to be strong now for the both of you, and if that means pulling Sam out of the fire because he wasn’t able to do the same for you, so be it. He’ll physically put Sam to bed and keep watch over you if he has to. He’ll stop sleeping and eating if it means making sure Sam’s all right. He’ll do whatever it takes, because he hasn’t done it up until now, and he owes Sam. He owes you.

“Finish your coffee,” is all he says. “I’m putting you to bed.”

Sam’s prepared to put up a fight when a slight tug on his hand pulls all of his concentration away from Dean and back to you. He turns to you with wide, expectant eyes, and feels your hand close weakly around his. Dean notices too, and takes hold of both cups of coffee and sets them down on the nightstand next to your head.

“Kid?” Dean asks, sitting down on the mattress next to your right shoulder. Your hand opens and closes around Sam’s a couple of times, slowly at first, then more desperately, like you’re trying to pull yourself back into some semblance of consciousness.

Sam tries to pull his hand back, but you hold on. It’s the first time you’ve moved since the spell, and it’s got both Winchesters’ hearts racing. “Come on, kid,” Sam urges you on, moving his other hand up to your forehead and smoothing back your hair. “Come on, you’re almost here.”

Your forehead creases for a moment in confusion, even though your eyes are closed. Your eyelashes flutter as your eyelids twitch rapidly. Sam smooths your forehead again in soft, comforting motions. Your breathing becomes erratic for a moment, like you’re gasping for air. Sam and Dean exchange worried glances over your head, but then you’re still again. They’re about to give up hope that you’re coming to when slowly, finally, your eyes snap open to take in the sight of the two of them on either side of your body.

Neither of them speak. They just stare at you, afraid that saying anything could undo whatever’s just brought you around. Sam’s hands stay where they are; Dean reaches down and takes your other hand in his and holds it tightly, giving it a quick squeeze almost more to reassure himself than to comfort you.

“Am I really here?” you say at last. Your eyes dart around the room, trying to take in everything you can. Nothing seems to be shifting into a different version of itself. Sam and Dean are both here, yes, but as far as you can tell, there’s only one of you, and the world outside the window is probably a real world filled with cars and people and houses rather than unending, blinding nothingness. You draw in a shuddering breath and burst into tears. “Oh god, am I really here?”

Neither man knows what to say. They glance at each other, and then quickly turn their eyes back to you as they watch you cry, half out of relief, half out of misery.

You grip them both tightly enough that it hurts them. “Please tell me this is real,” you choke, desperate for some sign you’re no longer trapped inside your own mind. Desperate to know you’ve escaped.

“It’s all real, sweetheart,” Dean is the first to say. He puts both of his hands around yours and squeezes. “You’re here.”

That only makes you cry harder. You can’t breathe well enough to form words; you just cling to Sam and Dean and sob, unable to do anything else. You’re free. You’re here. You’re real.

And you know you have a soul.

You know, because you’ve never been so ashamed in your entire life. You don’t know how you will possibly make any of this right.

So you hold them and cry. What else is there to do?


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You struggle with the idea of putting the pieces back together.

The stream of water hits you, so hot it’s nearly scalding. You stand under the pounding faucet, letting the wet heat pour over you until you can barely feel your skin anymore. You’re in the shower for at least thirty minutes, trying your best not to think, trying to only concentrate on the water and the steam and the physical pain, before you finally hear a knock on the door. It’s Cas, and his voice floats to you through the sound of the water like it’s coming to you out of a dream. It’s only one word: your name. It takes you out of your detachment and plants you firmly back in reality.

You take a moment to find your voice before you answer, “I’m fine, Cas.” You hear him shuffle for a few seconds outside the door, like he’s debating whether or not to say anything else, and then he’s gone. You’re back alone with your thoughts, or lack of thoughts, or whatever it is that’s running through your head.

You lean forward and rest your head against the cool tiles of the wall, breathing in and out slowly as you try to control your mind. It’s still hard to convince yourself you’re not trapped inside of the Nowhere Motel. Sam and Dean told you you’d only been out two days, but to you, it felt like years in that place, stuck with that awful, soulless version of yourself. It was years of nothing but hearing all the horrible things you’d done to your friends, seeing flashes of their faces as you deliberately broke their hearts again and again. You keep waiting to open your eyes to see those changing bedspreads instead of the constant cement walls of the bunker.

You give it another ten minutes before you finally shut off the water and step out of the shower into the cloud of steam that the bathroom has become. You’re grateful for the cloud as you grab a towel and wrap it around your torso—it means you can’t see your reflection in the mirror. The last thing you want right now is to look at yourself. You just want to crawl into your bed and do whatever it takes to forget everything you’ve experienced in the past few day-years in your head. You don’t know how that’s possible, if it’s even possible.

More importantly, and likely more impossibly, you know you need to fix everything you’ve broken with Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack. You have no idea where to start with that. “Sorry” doesn’t even begin to cover it, and you’re not sure there is a way to come back from some of the things you’ve done. How do you undo the havoc you’ve caused in such a short amount of time? And how do you learn to live with the fact that you were so desperate and broken that you allowed a witch to remove your soul? If your dad could see you now, he’d be so ashamed to have you as a daughter you imagine he’d never speak to you again.

Deep in thought, you open the bathroom door and step into the hallway. The steam billows around you like a protective shield and follows you about halfway down the corridor to your room. Wherever Cas has gone, he’s clearly staying away, which is simultaneously helpful and painful. You know you’re avoiding everyone until you can wrap your head around your situation, but the fact that they all seem to be avoiding you too hurts and only serves as another reminder of just how badly you’ve screwed up.

You get to your room and slip inside, shutting the door behind you as quietly as you can. You breathe a sigh of relief, then make quick work of changing into some comfortable clothes. You grab a pair of old flannel pajama bottoms, some underwear, and a black t-shirt and pull them on as quickly as you can as the heat from the shower slowly begins seeping out of your bones and a chill sets in. It’s not until you’re dressed that you realize—the shirt is an old tee of Dean’s. You can smell him on it, and your heart sinks immediately. You’ve pulled it off about halfway when another knock comes at your door. It opens before you can answer, and Dean himself is there, walking into your bedroom before you can tell him to go away.

He stops dead in his tracks when he sees you halfway topless in front of him, his face immediately turning red. You turn and make eye contact with him, but can’t think of what to say. He obviously can’t think of anything either. It takes a moment for you to gain your bearings enough to pull the shirt back down and cover your exposed belly, hoping he didn’t see much more before you caught yourself.

“I, uh…” he stammers. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just barged in.”

“It’s fine,” you mutter, pulling the shirt down further than you need to out of a false sense of modesty. It’s not like he’s never seen you changing before, but of course everything is different now. It kills you to feel that change so obviously, and your heart manages to sink even lower into your stomach. You try to think of something witty to say, but you’re all out of witticisms at this point. You wrap your arms protectively around your torso and watch Dean as he makes his way to your bed and sits on the edge.

“Cas said you were in there for a while,” he manages after a particularly long silence. His voice sounds strained and distant.

You nod. “Yeah, I…” you sigh, wanting to move closer, but feeling too nervous to force your feet to carry you. “I needed some time to clear my head.”

“I get that,” Dean says, watching you. He wonders why you haven’t come to sit next to him, but of course you haven’t. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do it if your roles were reversed. God, this is painfully, unbearably awkward. It shouldn’t be awkward between the two of you. You’ve always had such an easy, loving relationship, and now that seems completely shot to shit. Dean doesn’t know how to fix it any more than you do, and you can see that written across his face like a novel.

The silence settles in again, and you shift your weight between your legs a few times before you realize you need to end this conversation before it begins. “I think you should go,” you say at last.

Dean sighs deeply and shakes his head. “That ain’t gonna happen, kid. You and me—we need to talk.”

You actually take a step away from him at that, shaking your head and chewing on your lip like a nervous schoolgirl. “No,” you begin, your voice already faltering, “I can’t. Not now. Not after…” You let the thought die in the air.

Dean stands up and makes his way to you in long, sure strides. He wraps his arms around you, feeling you go cold and resistant in his hold. “Not giving you a choice,” he whispers gently. He holds you for a second longer and then lets go.

You drop your head dejectedly and cross to the bed to take up the space where Dean was just sitting. “Please, Dean,” you beg simply.

To your surprise, he follows you and takes the seat next to you. “We don’t have to talk about everything now, but I need to know you’re okay.”

You draw your knees up to your chest and rest your forehead against them. “How could I possibly be okay after everything I did, Dean? There’s no coming back from that.”

Dean spreads his legs wide and rests his elbows on his own knees, leaning forward in a contemplative stance. “I don’t know how you can be okay, but I know I need you to be. Kid, that was—” He stops, unsure of how to continue. You don’t respond. You can’t. You can’t even look at him. You sit there with your face hidden against your legs, eyes squeezed shut against an onslaught of tears.

Dean takes a deep breath. “So you’ve always had a thing for me, huh?”

You jerk back at that like he’s hit you, then bury your face in your hands as the tears start to flow. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe—“

Dean reaches over and tries to calm you by brushing your hair back and pushing it behind your shoulders. “Kid, kid, it’s okay. I’m just trying to lighten the mood here.” Well, fuck, that certainly didn’t work. He hooks his hands around your wrists and pulls your hands away as much as you'll let him. “Hey, look at me. It’s all good, okay?” You look at him doubtfully, your mouth feeling too heavy and numb to speak. “Doesn’t change anything between us, right? If it helps, I’ve always had a weird thing for you too, okay. Had to admit that to myself and Sammy after... all that.”

You stare at him miserably. “Dean, I am so sorry.” What else is there to say? You know it means nothing, but it’s all you’ve got.

Dean shakes his head. “I’m not saying that so you’ll apologize, I’m saying it so... I don’t know. So you know you were right. About a lot of it.”

“Gee, that makes me feel so much better,” you snort, reaching up to wipe some of the tears from your cheeks. You sit there staring at him, and, for an impossible moment, he’s just Dean again. Just the way he’s supposed to be. You feel a deep tug at your heartstrings and wrap your arms around yourself like the action will somehow keep you safe from the oncoming hurt you keep bringing your way. “Dean, I fucked up so badly, I don’t know if there’s a way to come back from all of this. I literally _stabbed_ _Sam in the back_. And Christ, the things I said to Jack—” You stop, swallowing a hard lump that’s formed inside your throat. “How do I fix that? Trying to sleep with you is probably the least horrible thing I did.”

“We get past this the same way we always do,” Dean says, sounding way more certain than he feels. “We just move forward. But first, I need to know you’re okay.”

He holds your eyes for a very long time.

“I don’t know that I am,” you finally respond.

Dean pulls you into his arms and hugs you tightly.

You really don’t know. And neither does he.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up and are forced to come to terms with what's happened between you and Cas.

The next morning, the boys are gone before you wake up. There’s a text from Dean:

“Checking out a case. Back by dinner.”

And nothing from Sam.

You spend most of the morning lying in bed, forcing yourself to take in the reality of it. By 10:30, your stomach is actually rumbling, so you force yourself up and shuffle your way slowly to the kitchen. As you walk, you run your fingers along the smooth, concrete walls of the bunker, further enforcing their realness in your mind in spite of the chill it sends through you. You’re still wearing Dean’s t-shirt; after your talk last night, you couldn’t bring yourself to take it off. Your bare feet slap lightly against the floors as you move, the sound helping you accept the truth of where you are.

You’re prepared to enter an empty kitchen; what you’re not prepared for is walking in on Castiel sitting alone at the table, his back turned to you.

“Oh shit,” you gasp without meaning to, startled into making your presence known. Cas starts himself and turns to face you.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “Hello.”

Well, it’s a little late to just back out of the room and run down the hall now. You simply stop in the doorway and stare at the angel, who stares right back at you just as awkwardly. “I thought you were all out on a case,” you manage to stammer after a minute or so of staring. “Dean texted me.”

“No,” Cas shakes his head. “I decided to stay back and, ah…” he trails off, as though he’s nervous to finish the sentence.

Your brow furrows in confusion for a moment when he refuses to continue, and then it dawns on you. You take a deep breath through your nose and nod. “Keep an eye on me.”

“It’s not what you think,” he offers, but you put up your hand and stop him.

“No, it’s fine,” you answer, forcing a smile that really doesn’t reach your eyes. You walk past Cas towards the refrigerator, casual as you like, that plastic smile still glued onto your mouth. “I just came in to get some—”

He cuts you off with your name. It’s so soft when he says it, you almost don’t hear it. The smile fades quickly from your face. “I need to apologize to you.” You sigh and stop where you are, so afraid to turn around and face Cas you just drop your head and stare at the tiles next to your feet.

“No you don’t,” you reply softly. You hear Cas push himself up from the table and ball your hands into fists to stop yourself from whirling around and throwing yourself at his feet to beg for forgiveness yourself. “You really, really don’t, Cas.”

“I threw you into a wall,” Cas reminds you, as if you need reminding. “I had no right to do that to you, no matter how angry I was. And my anger was misguided, to say the least.” His footsteps are moving toward you tentatively, but he doesn’t approach you all the way. He sees the way your hands are clenched and thinks better of it, somewhat misinterpreting your apprehension as controlled anger against him.

You’re both quiet again. You’re unsure how to reply. He’s out of things to say until he hears your response. It’s an impasse, and an awkward one at that.

Finally, you take a deep breath, gather up all the courage you have in those squishy little guts of yours, and turn around to face him. The look on his face crushes you. You instantly wish you’d held your resolve. He looks so wrecked, so dismal, and you know it’s all your fault. This guilt he’s feeling is because of something _you_ did, not because of him. You wish you could pull it out of him and bury it deep within yourself, but you know it’s not possible.

“Cas,” you start, not knowing where to go after that. You take a slow, uncertain step toward him. “Jesus, Cas.” You stop again, because you don’t know how to apologize for this. There aren’t words for what you need to say.

“What I said to you,” Cas continues, regardless of whether or not you want to hear it, “I had no right. I had no idea you hadn’t made the choice to lose your soul.”

That statement almost breaks you, because while it’s true you _hadn’t_ made the choice, it doesn’t mean you _wouldn’t have_. “What if I had made the choice?” You ask quietly, almost afraid of the answer.

“It’s your soul to do with as you please,” he answers blandly.

You look into his eyes and search for the truth in them. “Please, Cas,” you beg, “I need to hear it.”

Cas sighs deeply, his shoulders rounding forward in defeat. “I suppose I would have done exactly the same as I did.”

“You looked at me the way you looked at Dean when he tried to say yes to Michael.” Your voice is deadly quiet. Cas’ mouth becomes a thin line on his face. “You said, ‘After everything the Winchesters and I had done for you…’”

“I had no right—”

“You had every right, Cas, and that’s the problem!” You shout, your voice breaking. Cas is stunned into silence, which admittedly isn’t a terrific occurrence, but in this instance feels huge. “Everything you said was true back there. I gave up my soul without talking to any of you first. I let a witch perform a spell on me without saying a single word to any of you, and look where it got me.” You swallow, hard. “Where it got all of us.” You deflate a little, slightly out of breath and personal outrage. “ _I’m_ the one who had no right in this, not you.”

“I literally hurled you against a wall,” Cas counters, his voice growing louder and stonier as his ire grows. It’s unclear who he’s angrier at: you or himself, and that in and of itself infuriates him. “I caused you physical pain to punish you. I don’t ever have the right to do that to you.”

“I gave you the right the second I went behind your back to have that spell done,” you assure him. “What would have happened if you hadn’t chained me up the way you did? Imagine what else I would have done based on what I did to Sam alone!” Cas is quiet at this.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says at length, his eyes boring into yours. You catch and hold his gaze as best you can, in spite of how much you want to look away.

“I didn’t leave you a choice,” you remind him softly.

You’re about to go on when you become painfully aware of another presence in the room. You turn to your right to see Jack standing frozen in the doorway. He can barely look at you.

“Did anyone else go on this hunt?” You asked, completely taken by surprise that Jack is here and Dean didn’t think to mention that only he and Sam were going out.

Jack’s face remains cautiously neutral as he looks between you and Cas. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, “I’m interrupting something.”

“No,” Cas assures him. “It’s good that you’re here.”

Jack looks to you for assurance, but you’re unable to answer. You don’t know what to say. You can’t _not_ acknowledge the terrible things you said to him, but you certainly can’t bring it up here, like this. Certainly not in front of Castiel. This is something you need a particular time and for, and it’s definitely not now, in the bunker kitchen.

Jack, unfortunately, mistakes your silence for disinterest. “It’s okay,” he says with a sad smile. “I’ll let you two finish talking.” Before you can stop him, he’s turned and gone back out of the room.

You reach after him in a futile gesture, then collapse a little onto yourself and bury your face in your hands. You let out a small, frustrated scream before leaning backwards and dragging your fingers through your hair as you try to figure out what to do.

“Talk to him,” Cas says, as though he’s read your thoughts. You realize with some embarrassment that he probably has.

You cover your mouth with your hand and rub your lips with your palm. “What do I even say to him? He can’t ever trust me again.”

“I don’t know what you say, but I know he loves you.” Cas finally crosses the space between you and puts his hands on your shoulders. “You need to give him the chance to decide if he’s going to forgive you.”

The words are harsh, but Cas says them without a trace of anger. You nod slowly, reaching up to place your hands over Cas’. “Thank you. Everything you’ve done for me—it’s more than I deserve.”

“We all deserve second chances,” he says.

“God, I hope so,” you answer, pulling away from Cas and starting off in the direction Jack’s gone.

You repeat yourself quietly under your breath as you walk, “I hope so.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You do your best to apologize to Jack.

“Jack?” You call as you make your way down the hall and toward his bedroom. You don’t get an answer, but that doesn’t stop you as much as you’d like to let it.

When you reach his room, you see he’s left the door open, which is at least a good sign. You approach the doorway and knock on the frame, looking in to see him sitting up, rigid on his bed with his hands planted firmly on his knees. He turns his head slightly to look at you, and you step into the doorway, kicking the jamb nervously with one bare foot.

“Can I come in?” You ask, crossing your arms over your chest and holding your elbows gently as you wait for an answer.

Jack looks down, then up, then down again. “If you want to.”

You sigh. Of course you don’t _want_ to, but you don’t have a choice at this point. You take a step inside, but don’t come any closer than that. You see Jack tense up the second you move closer to him, and you feel such a deep pain in your heart, you didn’t even think it was possible. The tears immediately prick the corners of your eyes, and you take a deep breath in an attempt to stop them before they begin. You don’t get to cry through this. This is not your time to feel sad.

“What I said to you was horrible,” you start. It seems obvious enough, but it needs to be said. Unfortunately, that’s most of what you’ve got. You take another step forward, arms still hugging your torso. “It’s not enough to say I’m sorry,” you force yourself to continue. Jack still isn’t looking at you. You don’t blame him. “But I am. Sorry, I mean. I am so sorry, Jack.”

“Which part are you sorry for?” he asks, totally without malice. He’s finally looking at you now, and you see a real curiosity in his eyes.

“All of it,” you say quickly. Maybe too quickly, because the answer doesn’t seem to satisfy him.

“No,” he says, “I mean are you sorry for the part that was a lie, or the part that was true?”

The question nearly knocks you on your ass. You weren’t expecting this, but Jack, despite his age, has always been unusually perceptive. If you weren’t so twisted up in yourself right now, you’d be proud.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” you admit, at last walking across the room to stand beside Jack where he’s sitting. When he doesn’t flinch or move away, you lower yourself onto the mattress and sit down beside him.

“Will you try?” he begs earnestly, his eyes big and shining as they meet yours.

You drop your hands to your lap and begin to fidget. Every instinct you have is demanding you lower your eyes to stare at your fingers, but you fight that urge with every fiber of your being. Jack deserves better than that.

He deserves better than you, a voice in your head chimes in. It’s hard not to agree with it.

"Which part do you think was true?” you ask him at length.

Jack’s brows knit together and he cocks his head while he thinks. He looks so much like a younger Cas, it’s uncanny. “The part about my mother, and about you not needing to love me like you are, I think.” The knife in your heart takes another twist. “And the part about us not being a real family. The part about how that’s going to get us all killed.”

You breathe in as deeply and slowly as you can manage with that stabbing pain in your chest. You consciously will your hands to stop fidgeting, then reach over and take one of Jack’s hands in yours before you can think yourself out of it. “Jack,” you start, turning toward him and looking him directly in the eye. “All of those things are half-truths, which is why I said them. I am not your mom, and we are not blood family, but that doesn’t matter.” You squeeze his hand tightly. Thankfully, he squeezes back. “We _are_ a real family. Just a different sort than most people are used to. And even if believing in that gets us killed, I’d rather die fighting for that belief and for each other than die alone without you all.

“You said you were all scared, all the time,” Jack murmurs, still holding your hand. “Was that the truth?”

You nod. “Yes. And I’m not sorry about telling you that. I wish I could be, but you need to know how scared we are. You need to know that we’re not perfect, or incapable of being scared.”

“Like how scared they were for you,” he offers softly.

Another twist of the knife. You nod. “Yes,” you say, your voice shaking slightly. “Like how scared they were for me.”

“But they lie to me about it? You lie to me about it?”

“Like I said, we lie to protect you.” This isn’t getting any easier.

Jack drops his head. “I wish you wouldn’t lie to me at all.”

One more twist, and you’re sure you’re going to break. You swallow back your tears and clear your throat. “I know.” You take his other hand so you’re now holding both of them. “And I promise you I will do my best to never lie to you again, Jack.”

You make and hold eye contact with him, trying to burn the sincerity of your words into your stare. “Jack, I love you so much, it terrifies me. I never wanted to be a mom. I don’t know how to be one. My mom abandoned me, so I didn’t grow up with one. I don’t understand the first thing about how a mother is supposed to love a child. I tried so hard for so long not to love you like this,” you pause long enough to take in the tears that are beginning to stream down Jack’s face. “I know I’m not your mom. I didn’t ever want that level of responsibility. I refuse to let you down the way—“

“The way your mom let you down,” Jack finishes for you. Wise beyond his years, this one. The pain in your heart lessens just a little.

You’re both quiet for a moment before you can find your voice to start again. “But all of that doesn’t matter now, because I do love you, and I will do everything in my power to protect you from this world. Even if it means protecting you from myself.” You wrap your arms around his shoulders and pull him into you. He, in turn, wraps his arms around your waist and hugs you tightly enough that you can feel the full strength of him in his touch.

“I hope you can forgive me, Jack,” you whisper into his ear. Your tears are flowing freely; you don’t do anything to hide it now.

You feel him nod against you. You go on holding him like that as long as he will let you.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all the people with whom you could have a heart-to-heart this morning, Rowena is certainly the most unexpected.

Twenty minutes or so later, you find yourself back in the kitchen where your hunger originally brought you. You’re still feeling like you’ve gone ten rounds with a Mack truck (both emotionally and physically), but at least it seems like there’s now a light at the end of the tunnel. You know there’s still plenty more healing to be done, a lot more forgiveness to be sought and amends to be made, but there’s hope now, which is something you haven’t had in quite some time.

You’re standing in front of the refrigerator pondering where to start when a surprisingly welcome voice chirps from somewhere behind you.

“Finally awake, are we?”

You turn to see Rowena, who is out of bed at last herself, standing in the doorway. She’s looking paler than usual (in fact, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen her out of makeup before now), but she’s still a vision to behold, and, given what she’s put herself through to help you, your heart is practically bursting at the sight of her.

“Nice to see you up and about,” she continues, crossing the room with a genuine smile on her face.

“I could say the same about you,” you reply, a little unsure of yourself. You’re immensely grateful to Rowena for all she’s done, but your history with each other doesn’t exactly lend itself to hugs and girl talk. It’s hard having the urge to both throw your arms around her and throw punches simultaneously, but old habits die hard. For now, you’ll settle for smiling at her.

“They told me what you did for me,” you continue, your arms hanging awkwardly at your sides. You cross them over your stomach just to have something to do with them. Rowena, on the other hand, looks perfectly comfortable, as she tends to do in every situation. God, you wish you had half her confidence sometimes. “Thank you,” you say sincerely, making sure you meet and hold her eyes when you say it.

Rowena smiles at you and reaches out to take one of your hands. “I won’t say I was happy to do it exactly, but I am happy to see you on the other side of this.” She motions past you with a nod. “Were you about to eat something?”

You nod back. “I’m friggin’ starving,” you admit, your hand still in Rowena’s.

“Mind if I join you?” she asks, giving said hand a quick pat before releasing you. “Soul retrieval is hard work, and I’ve barely been surviving on soup and sandwiches from a local deli, courtesy of our boys, since the ritual. I’d love a proper cuppa and something hot to eat if you don’t mind taking the time?” She poses it as a question, but you know Rowena enough to understand an order when you hear it. It’s one you’re more than happy to take at this point.

“Grab a seat,” you say, motioning to the table. “I’m no chef, but I do a mean omelet.”

Rowena finds her way to a chair and sits gracefully. You grab a dingy kettle, fill it with water, and set it on the stove before grabbing a few eggs and a block of cheese from the fridge. She watches you carefully as you go about making the omelet, melting the butter in a frying pan, grating the cheese, and doing all of the generally calming motions involved in cooking. For a moment, you actually forget you’re not alone, which makes the entire endeavor even more relaxing than it already is. Rowena smiles—actually smiles—at you as you work, pleased as punch to see you pulled out of your funk. When the omelet’s done, and the kettle’s shrieked, you pop a sachet of tea into a cup, fill it most of the way with the boiled water, and add a bit of milk to finish it off. You turn to Rowena and catch the smile just as she wipes it from her face.

“What?” you ask, slightly confused.

“Nothing,” she answers calmly. “Just pleased to see the spell has worked so well.”

You nod, even though you don’t quite believe her. You divvy up the food between two plates and place the cuppa in front of Rowena. “Do you take sugar?” you ask, grabbing a few packets from the counter and setting them down next to the mug.

Rowena nods, pleasant as you like, and begins emptying the sugar into her tea. You gather utensils, divide them between the two of you, and sit down to start eating. You’re shoveling omelety goodness into your mouth while Rowena stirs her tea quietly, seeming less interested in her food and drink than in watching you. Your hunger prevents you from noticing it at first, but after a few silent minutes pass, you finally catch on you’re being studied.

“Yes?” you say through a mouth full of egg. Rowena stills her spoon and sets the cup down at last.

“You’re a wee bit of a marvel, aren’t you?” she answers in a voice that’s more factual than awe-struck. It strikes you in a way as to make you lose your appetite.

“What do you mean?”

Rowena pulls the spoon out of her cup and takes a long sip of tea. “You had your soul severed from your corporeal form less than 96 hours ago,” she replies, her tone scholarly as she speaks, “and yet, here you are, fully restored and capable of cooking breakfast. I’d say that makes you a bit of a miracle.”

“And you a bit of a miracle worker?” you answer, eyebrow cocked, expecting that’s what she’s been waiting to hear.

The witch can’t help but smile at that. “Well, I don’t like to sing my own praises, but yes, I suppose that does make me a bit of a miracle worker.”

You roll your eyes ever so slightly. “Rowena, all you do is sing your own praises. I’m happy to thank you again if that’s what you want, or swear a debt of honor to you, or whatever you want, but will you at least let me eat first?”

She sighs and sets her mug down, finally having the grace to look like something other than the cat that ate the canary. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have an actual chat to you.”

That stops you dead. Rowena wants to talk to you, woman-to-woman? This can’t be good. You put your fork down and fold your hands together to hide their shaking. “If you’re going to warn me about the perils of letting witches perform psychiatric spells on me, then believe me, I’ve learned my lesson.”

Rowena makes direct eye contact with you and her look is serious enough to kill your snark. “Dean told me your story,” she tells you simply.

You swallow audibly. “Which part?”

“All of it.”

Your lungs are suddenly a dead weight in your chest. It’s incredibly hard to breathe. Dean told Rowena everything? Why on earth would he do that? What purpose could that possibly serve? Of all the people you’d ever want seeing your dirty laundry, Rowena is certainly among the lowest on the list. “Really wish he hadn’t,” is all you can manage, pressing your lips together.

“Tell me about Toledo.”

Your breath catches in your throat. You shake your head violently. “No,” you protest, feeling your heart starting to race. “I don’t—I can’t talk about that.”

“The boys don’t know the full story, do they?” Rowena asks gently.

You shake your head again. “No. And I don’t ever want them to.” You look her dead in the eye to make yourself clear. “I won’t ever talk about that night, Rowena.”

She nods, and folds her hands together in front of her. “I understand,” she murmurs. You’re about to scoff when she continues, “I have a Toledo as well. Although in my case, it was Braemar.” You stare at her, dumbstruck, and wait for her to go on. She doesn’t of course, which isn’t terribly shocking. If you’re not willing to talk about _your_ Toledo, why should she talk about hers. Your eyes meet and a moment of pure understanding passes between the two of you. You feel a lump form in your throat and swear you can see tears standing in Rowena’s eyes.

To your surprise, Rowena reaches across the table and puts her hand on yours. “My dear, you mustn’t take on all of that alone. I’ve rarely said this to anyone and meant it, but you remind me quite a lot of myself when I was young, and I remember how hard it is to cope with that sort of emptiness when it hits you.”

It’s so unexpected, you very literally almost fall out of your chair. You search Rowena’s face and eyes for a sign, any sign, that she’s fucking with you, but you see nothing but concern and candor. “What did you do about it?”

She shrugs, and even that manages to be graceful. “I turned to black magic, of course,” she says, matter-of-fact, as though it were the most obvious answer in the universe. You guess, given the circumstances, it might as well be. “It wasn’t happiness and sunshine that led me down this path, dearest. It was pain and misery and loneliness, and it’s something I’m only now finding my way out of.” She sighs and pulls her hand back, looking suddenly stricken. “Look at what I’ve done to myself in all these years, trying to chase back those feelings. Look what I’ve done to my son, my grandson.” A few of those standing tears begin to make their way down her cheeks, and you’ve never been so shocked in your life. “I’ve destroyed my entire life, the same way you very nearly did. You deserve better than that. We both do.” She takes your hand again, and then the other one, holding on to them tightly as she speaks. “Thankfully it’s not too late for either of us.”

You want to shake your head, but its hard not to believe her when she sounds this earnest. Instead, your doubt manifests as a question: “Do you really believe that?”

“I have to, dear. What other choice do I have?”

At that, she gently drops your hands, picks up her cup of tea, and moves on with her breakfast as if nothing at all has happened. The change is sudden and astounding, but not altogether surprising. You sit there for a moment, stunned, before taking your cue from Rowena and starting up with your own omelet again.

The two of you continue to eat in a comfortable silence, catching each other’s gaze every now and then and letting a warm understanding pass there before moving on. It’s possibly the nicest breakfast you’ve ever shared with another person before, save your dad, and you’re beyond flabbergasted that it’s happening with Rowena. She seems to catch your confusion and smiles at it. She is, after all, still herself.

“I must say,” she says after quite some time, “this is a damn fine cup of tea, my darling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about ready to wind this sucker up... thinking one or two more chapters should do it.
> 
> Thank you all for reading this far and for the encouragement and kudos! I've been working 90 hour weeks since the 29th, and this fic has been the main thing getting me through my 14-hour days. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed working on it!


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new hunt forces you and Sam to face each other, as well as your past.

Even from the kitchen, you can hear the door of the bunker when it slams closed. You and Rowena look at each other for a confused moment before pushing yourselves to your feet and hurrying toward the entryway. You meet Jack in the hallway, who looks at you both with the same question you’re currently wearing on your faces, and the three of you rush into the library where you find Cas already waiting. The group of you walks into the War Room, where you’re greeted by Sam and Dean more or less running down the stairs. The sight of them in such a rush worries you and, glancing at the faces of your comrades, you’re not the only one.

“What gives?” you ask first. It’s the first time since you’ve gotten your soul back that you’ve actually stopped thinking about yourself and your predicament. It's a welcomed change.

“Nice to see you up and at it,” Dean responds, moving past you with a brief smile. He offers the same to Rowena, but otherwise doesn’t stop. This doesn’t bode well.

“Nachzehrers,” Sam responds, as though that explains everything. He, too, hasn’t stopped moving since he got downstairs. Both he and Dean have brushed past the group and headed straight into the library.

Cas leads the charge after them, and you, Rowena, and Jack follow like a sad sort of Greek chorus as you watch the Winchesters pull a variety of books, jars, weapons, and boxes off the shelves. “I don’t understand,” Cas says, staring at them without a clue as how to help. “We know how to kill a Nachzehrer—we simply need copper coins and a form of decapitation. And if we kill their alpha—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean agrees, obviously not swayed by Cas’ measured response. “We kill their alpha and everyone they’ve turned goes back to being human.”

“You don’t understand,” Sam interjects, “this isn’t a small nest like last time. This is an entire freaking _town_.” He’s grabbing anything and everything that looks even remotely copper or silver he can get his hands on.

Cas shakes his head. “But that’s not possible. Nachzehrer stick to small nests. They keep a low profile—”

“Yeah, Encyclopedia Brown, we’ve read the lore too,” Dean interrupts before heading out of the library, presumably in the direction of his bedroom.

“This feels slightly above my pay grade,” Rowena says at length, putting her hands up in the air and grabbing a seat in one of the library’s comfier chairs.

Jack nods, inclined to agree. “I don’t believe I have a pay grade, but I don’t understand what’s happening.” He takes a seat next to Rowena, his head snapping back and forth between Sam, who is almost dizzying in his motions, and Cas, who still has yet to move or grasp the seriousness of this situation.

For your part, you figure heading after Dean is the safest bet. You still haven’t spoken to Sam since you tried to kill him, and you’re not sure you want the first time that happens to be with an audience. Besides, Sam’s not the only one with answers, and a solitary Dean on a warpath still feels like a surer choice right now given your only other alternative. You leave the room without a word and head after Dean, who, sure enough, has gone to his bedroom to pull out some of his heavier artillery. He hears you enter and casts you a glance over his shoulder as he swaps his usual Colt for his sawed-off 1887.

“You ever heard of copper bullets?” He asks you as he breaks open the 1887 and checks the barrels. He snaps it back together and picks the Colt back up to shove back into his waistband.

“I’ve heard of copper-plated. I didn’t know you could get full copper bullets,” you say, a little taken aback by the question. Hell, you’re taken aback by the entire circumstance. Weren’t you just apologizing and crying in Dean’s arms a little more than 12 hours ago?

“Yeah,” he says, grabbing a second sawed-off from the little collection he’s got on his bed and passing it to you. “Might be something worth looking into for future reference.” He starts to walk away from him and you catch his arm.

“Hey!” you shout, loud and sudden enough to get him to stop and look at you, really look at you for a second. “A few hours ago you were asking me if I was okay because I’d lost my damn soul, and now you’re handing me your freakin’ Ithaca like it’s a hockey stick?” Dean at least has the grace to look embarrassed. “Not for nothing—I’m glad to be back on the team and all, but it feels like we’re missing several important steps here.”

Dean sighs and drops the arm holding his shotgun to his side. “Look, kid, I told you we’d get through this the way we always do, right?” You nod. “Well, the way we always do it usually ends bloody for someone, and this time, I’d like it to be the other guys. If you’re not ready for this, then you can stay here with Rowena and there’s no hard feelings, but we have to move now.” His hand falls on your shoulder and grips it, hard. “You okay to do this?”

You take a shuddering breath and nod again. “Yeah,” you say, hoping you sound a lot more certain than you feel. Truth be told, killing some monsters would probably do you a world of good right now. The one thing you’re not sure about is how you’re going to fight alongside Sammy like this. You’ve never gone into a fight this big with one of your guys mistrusting your every move before. There’s too much that has the potential to go wrong, and that terrifies you.

Dean sees the look on your face and reads it in an instant. Instead of saying anything, he motions for you to follow. The two of you charge back into the library, where Sam has amassed a pretty spectacular array of copper and silver items. It would make a magpie proud. Cas seems to have finally come around as well, as he stands next to Sam with a bag in his hand, ready to pack. Rowena and Jack are standing now, and it looks like they’ve been helping as Sam’s been giving them the full download of what you’re all about to walk into.

“Sam,” Dean says, making firm eye contact with his brother, “kid,” he says, switching to you. “The two of you go grab whatever silver weapons you can from the armory. Bullets, knives, hatchets—whatever we’ve got. Won’t kill ‘em, but it’ll slow those sons of bitches down til we figure out which one is the alpha.” You shook Dean a stricken look, which he acknowledges and immediately pretends not to notice. Sam nods and heads into the hallway, alone. “You got your Browning?” Dean asks you, taking the Ithaca from you and placing it on the table next to everything else.

“In my room,” you answer.

“Grab it on your way out,” he orders, helping Cas fill the bag with everything the others have gathered. “Rowena and Jack, you stay here unless we need you for back up. You two,” he says, meaning you and Sam, “meet us at the Impala in five.”

Soundly dismissed, you take off in the direction Sam went, your hands curled into fists so tight your fingernails are digging into your palms and leaving little half-moons there. Your heart’s racing at a thousand miles an hour, it seems. By the time you reach the armory, you’re a little worried you’re going to pass out. With a deep breath, you push aside the half-opened door and enter the room, where Sam has his back turned to you as he passes over assorted weapons, deciding which ones to take and which to leave behind.

You say nothing but move to the next row of shelves beside him, shooting him a nervous look between weapons now and again. He’s silent as he works, and makes a very deliberate point of not even glancing in your direction.

It only takes about a minute and a half for you to crack. “Are you just going to ignore me for the rest of our lives, or are we going to talk about this?”

“We’ve come this far without talking about the important stuff, why start now?” He says, his voice cold.

You stop looking at weapons (you’ve got two or three silver blades in your hand at this point, which seems like a good start) and turn to face him fully. “What are you talking about?”

At last, Sam stops fiddling with the sharp things and looks you head-on. What you see on his face is a mixture of anger, disappointment, and guilt. “Kid, we slept together, and neither of us has EVER mentioned it again until you brought it up with Dean.”

You’re immediately filled with shame. “Look, I’m sorry I told him—“

“That’s not the point,” Sam stops you, putting the few things he’s holding down with a clatter. “The point is, you and I should have talked about it.”

You shake your head and take a step back from him. “We said it wasn’t supposed to change things between us.”

“Not letting it change anything and refusing to acknowledge it are two completely different things,” Sam says, exasperated.

“Hey, I’m not the only one who never brought it up again, Sam,” you deride him. “If that’s your issue here, you’re just as guilty as I am.”

“I know I am, and that’s why I’m so pissed!”

That one throws you. You weren’t expecting that response. You open your mouth again, “I don’t—” but he cuts you off.

“Look, we slept together and said nothing would be different between us, and that’s fine. Nothing was different. Nothing IS different.” He runs his hands through his hair in an exasperated gesture and turns his back to you again. You can’t see the look of disgrace on his fact when he speaks, but you can hear it in his voice: “But I watched you go completely off the rails the last few months, and I sat there and said _nothing_ to you about it. Whatever happened between us should have meant at least enough that I stepped in and said something when I saw that happening. I haven’t talked to you about anything important since we screwed, and that is completely on me.” He faces you again at last, and you can see the self-loathing hanging on him like a shroud.

“Sam, I stabbed you,” you remind him, retaking that step toward him. “Literally, physically stabbed you. Why are you angry at yourself right now?” You metaphorically try to pull the self-loathing away from him and dress yourself in it. “Get pissed at me, for fuck’s sake! So you didn’t say anything? None of us ever says anything until it’s too late. That’s our whole thing! What we don’t do—what we _shouldn’t_ do—is what I did. I went behind your backs and I put us all in danger. I didn’t reach out when I was in trouble. That’s not on you, that’s on me.”

“Fine. Then let’s put it on both of us.”

You’re both silent now, the gap between you seeming both insurmountable and insignificant at the same time. Sam hangs his head and sweeps his hair back with his right hand. You do the same thing without realizing you’re mirroring his movements.

“I’m sorry I stabbed you,” you say at last. It’s the dumbest thing you’ve probably ever said, but you have to say it. You can’t just… stab somebody you’ve slept with and not apologize for it. It sounds so stupid out loud, you almost cringe, but you manage hold it together by some manner of grace.

“Weirdly enough, I get it,” Sam says, grabbing a stool that’s been sitting among the racks of weapons and taking a moment to sit on it himself. “I’m probably the only one in this bunker that can say it and mean it, but I get why you didn’t want your soul back. Now you know why I fought so hard not to have one.”

You take another step closer to him, and then another, until the distance is almost nonexistent. “How did you move on, knowing what you did?” You stand in front of him, almost between his knees, and look down into his eyes.

“I didn’t really have a choice.” That’s something you’ve been hearing a lot today. “I mean, I had Dean. I had you. I had Cas. I didn’t do it alone. Everything you’ve been going through, you don’t have to do it alone.”

You nod, trying to take in everything he’s saying. “Rowena told me the same thing.”

“ _Rowena?_ ” Sam looks like he’s about to fall over.

You shrug and throw your arms up and out. “Trust me, I’m just as shocked as you are.”

Sam takes hold of your hand and pulls you closer to him. It’s an intimate gesture, but not sexual or romantic. It’s necessary, somehow, in a way you can’t explain or describe. “Can I ask you one thing, and ask that you give me the full truth?” he asks, still holding your hand.

“I don’t know if I want to say yes,” you say, the raw intensity in his eyes scaring the living hell out of you, “but I guess you’ve earned it at this point.”

“What happened in Toledo?”

You stare at him and wait for him to walk back the question, but he doesn’t. He knows Toledo wasn’t the beginning of all of this, and he knows it certainly wasn’t the end, but it’s the crux of the whole thing. Whatever happened in Toledo was the defining moment in this saga, and if you don’t talk about it now, he knows you’re never going to talk about it, which means it’s going to eat away at you until one day you find yourself back here again. You see all of that in his eyes as he continues to stare the question at you.

You pull back, pull your hand out of his, and grab another stool from the other side of the shelf. You sit with a loud exhale, and press yourself close enough to Sam that your legs are touching from your shins to your kneecaps. “I wasn’t as drunk as you thought I was that night.” Sam nods, but doesn’t say anything. “I wanted to be. I wanted to be literally anything I could be so that feeling couldn’t touch me anymore. If someone had offered me heroin, I would have done it.” You pause and wait for the judgement to come, but Sam continues to listen in silence. “Then I saw that guy. I watched him for a while. I even thought he looked kind of like that dude from ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ the more I watched him. I saw him beat the hell out of that kid who tried to hustle him at pool, and I saw the way you and Dean reacted to that. I decided he was what I needed.”

“Why?” Sam finally asks.

“Because if he couldn’t fuck the pain out of me, I thought he could at least hit me hard enough that I wouldn’t care anymore. And I thought it would be the thing that finally convinced you and Dean I was a lost cause.” Sam’s mouth goes completely dry. He drops his eyes. You go on:

“So I offered to go home with him. Acted like I was completely wasted. You both tried to stop me, but I laughed it off and you let me, just like I hoped you would.”

“Kid, I’m sorry,” Sam interrupts. You put up a hand to silence him.

“Don’t. You wanted to hear this, and this is the only time I’m gonna tell it, so I need you to shut up until it’s finished and then I need to never hear anything about it again, okay?” Sam nods, and settles back into his dejected position. “We went back to his place, and screwed around like I planned we would, and then I said no. I told him I wanted to stop. I thought he’d smack me around a little,” you actually laugh at the thought, but the sound is bitter. “I didn’t know he’d…” Your voice stops. It doesn’t die off or fade, it just stops. You’re looking at Sam, but you’re really looking past him. Your eyes are misty. You’re not here in this armory, you’re back in that small, awful apartment in Toledo, and you’re looking into the cold, blue eyes of a man you’re expecting is about to kill you when he’s finished doing what he’s doing. “I didn’t know.”

“I managed to get to my cell and call you, which distracted him enough for me to crawl to the bathroom and lock myself in while I tried to figure out what to do. I thought he’d beat the door down. I knew he’d kill me if he did. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of there, but the entire time, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘How am I going to explain this to Sam and Dean? I don’t know how I’m ever going to explain this to Sam and Dean.’” You feel like you should be crying, but you aren’t. You think Sam is, but you don’t know; you’re not here anymore. “I don’t even remember crawling out the window, but I do remember falling. And I remember laughing, because I didn’t think I was up that high to begin with. I landed on my feet, and then there was nothing but pain, and the rain… and eventually these two, tall, handsome fellas who showed up and put me in the backseat of this really sexy car.” You come back to yourself at that point, and realize both your and Sam’s eyes are, in fact, sparkling with tears. You laugh, impossibly, and bury your face in your hands just long enough to catch your breath.

Sam’s got both his arms around you before you’ve pulled your hands away. He pulls you onto his lap and hugs you so fiercely, you’re almost worried your ribs are going to crack. You wrap your arms around him in return and hug him, nestling your face against his neck. Sam opens his mouth, but you whisper into his ear before he has a chance to speak.

“Please don’t tell me you’re sorry,” you sigh. “Please don’t be sorry for me, Sam.” He nods against you, and goes on hugging you until you let go.

You stand up from his lap and offer him your hand. He takes it and you pull him to his feet. “Weapons?” you say.

“Weapons,” he replies. You each grab what you came in here to get and start for the door. Sam grabs you one last time and kisses the top of your head. You squeeze his bicep and smile at him before you’re both out in the hallway making your way back toward the library. He waits outside your bedroom as you stop inside just long enough to swap your PJ pants for a pair of jeans and slip your Hi Power into the back of your waistband. Then the two of you are off the to the races, just short of running

Jack and Rowena watch you pass as you make your way through the library and into the War Room.

“We’re ready if you need anything,” Rowena calls while the two of you bound up the stairs. The last thing you see before the bunker door closes is Rowena placing her hands protectively on Jack’s shoulders.

The Impala’s engine is warm and purring by the time you make it outside, a welcoming, comforting sound. Dean, of course, is in the driver’s seat. Cas sits patiently in the back. Dean pops the trunk so you and Sam can toss everything you collected in the armory inside along with the shotguns and the library haul. Before you close the trunk, Sam gives your hand one final squeeze before he’s making his way to the passenger side and sliding onto the soft, black leather inside.

You open the door behind Dean and slip into the seat next to Cas, who shoots you a reassuring glance.

“Everybody in?” Dean asks. His eyes catch yours in the rear-view mirror.

You and Sam slam your doors closed at almost exactly the same time.

“Let’s go,” you answer.

The engine roars. You hit the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE. IT TOOK ME A MONTH, BUT I AM FINALLY DONE.
> 
> Seriously, this was my one form of self-care during the last several weeks of unending work leading up to yesterday, my last day of a very, very long season.
> 
> I hope you have all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'd love to hear from you either way. Thank you for taking the time, and congratulations Reader on getting Your soul back!


End file.
